Twitter opens ad platform to all U.S. businesses

Steven Loeb · April 30, 2013 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/2f27

Twitter Ads gives small businesses access to Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts

In March of last year, Twitter debuted its self-service ad platform to give small businesses access to Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts to help them grow their business. The program was only made availabile to select businesses, who could access it through invite only.

Now, a year later, Twitter has finally opened Twitter Ads to any company that wants to use it, it was announced in a blogpost Tuesday.

"When we built our self-service ad platform last March, our goal was to create an experience that would be powerful and also extremely easy for anybody to use. Whether you’re an individual looking to grow your personal brand, or an online retailer looking to increase sales, Twitter’s ad platform has the right products to help achieve your unique goals," Ravi Narasimhan, Product Manager for Revenue at Twitter, wrote.

"Over the past year we’ve listened carefully to feedback from the thousands of businesses and individuals who’ve had access to the self-serve tool, and made enhancements based on their suggestions, including more targeting and reporting in the UI."

Twitter’s ad platform is self-service solution that gives businesses the opportunity to get exposure to Twitter’s userbase by giving them access to buying Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.

With Promoted Tweets, Twitter automatically identifies the right audience for the tweet in question. With Promoted Accounts, Twitter helps businesses connect with new people who want to hear from them and can spread the word about your business to others.

Twitter has over 200 million active users, and these types of advertisements gives businesses another way to promote themselves, rather than simply putting advertisements in standard tweets.

For those who already had access to Twitter Ads, the platform will remain the same, Narasimhan said. For those who want to take advantage of the now open platform, they can go to Twitter's self-service page at business.twitter.com to answer some questions, and then they will be able to start using Twitter Ads.

Advertising on Twitter

Twitter has been recently been taking big steps toward building up its advertising revenue.

Earlier this month, Twitter introduced new Twitter cards to incentivize businesses and advertisers to showcase their content on Twitter, which they hope will lead to further monetization. The social network also launched a redesigned resource for businesses to learn how to user Twitter, including marketing tips, glossary, and ideas on how to promote on Twitter.

Last month, Twitter launched a new API that is designed make it easier for brands to manage campaigns and get more value out of advertising on Twitter, by allowing them to integrate with its ads platform through a list of API partners that will supply them with better targeting and tools. The first five of these partners were HootSuite, Adobe, Saleforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

Most recently, introduced a new tool for advertisers what could make that number go even higher: keyword targeting, which will allow advertisers to sell ads to users based on words in their tweets. It will be available in the full Twitter Ads UI and through the Ads API.

Advertising is key to any social network's long-term success, and, so far, Twitter's strategy seems to have be working. Market researcher eMarketer is projecting Twitter to grow revenue by 63% to nearly $1 billion in advertising sales by 2014.

By 2015, Twitter is expected to pull in $1.33 billion in worldwide ad revenue. In September, eMarketer had projected that the network would take in $807.5 million in 2014, but has now revised that number to $950 million.

(Image source: https://tweetframeapp.com)