Twitter on Tuesday revealed its first-ever plan for monetizing microblogging, a service called Promoted Tweets that delivers paid ads in the form of tweets at the top of Twitter.com search results pages.
Aiming for a model that “puts users first, amplifies existing value, and generates profit,” Twitter will display these advertising tweets at the top of a search page for particular queries. One might imagine that a search for “laptops” might trigger a Best Buy tweet to appear, promoting a laptop sale at the retailer’s Web site. When the advertiser pays for a tweet to be displayed, it will be clearly marked as “promoted.”
Twitter wants to ensure its users, however, that this new wave of advertising tweets won’t completely sweep away relevance on the social networking site. After all, the main attraction to Twitter is its ability to provide real-time information about the world.
Users already subscribed to a brand will receive Promoted Tweets just as they would any other tweet from the brand. Additionally, Promoted Tweets can, like ordinary tweets, be replied to, retweeted, and favorited. In fact, Twitter is relying on usage of these functions to demonstrate whether a Promoted Tweet “resonates” with users or not.
“There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet,” further explains Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. “Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don’t interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.”
Advertising partners already on board include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America, with more likely to be added soon.
Twitter COO Dick Costolo will be discussing the new plan today at the AdAge Digital conference and tomorrow CEO Evan Williams will join Costolo in a discussion of the new advertising tool at Chirp, the official Twitter developer conference.
