Last week Twitter announced its new advertising platform, Promoted Tweets, which users have either begun to notice or will shortly start to see at the top of their Twitter search results. This newly-launched advertising platform is a Twitter-proclaimed “non-traditional” monetization tool from a company that has traditionally put value and user experience well ahead of profit.
Much like the prominent ad results from Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, and Yahoo Sponsored Search, which typically land at the top and to the right of the users’ natural search results, Promoted Tweets will also resemble natural tweets and will appear at the top of the Twitter search results. Much like the above-mentioned advertising platforms, Twitter too will display the fact that these results are paid for by advertisers. To further cement the similarity, Twitter advertisers will also bid on keywords that will trigger the display of their Promoted Tweets. Perhaps what Twitter’s Biz Stone is referring to as “non-traditional” is the real-time relevancy and engaging nature of these Promoted Tweets. Additionally, all Promoted Tweets are actually organic tweets, but due to the advertiser’s keyword bidding and real-time relevancy, they will also appear on related searches.
Promoted Tweets, unlike many sponsored ads on search engines’ results pages, will or should have a more interactive and casual feel in order to be effective for the advertiser. Businesses can best use this tool to endorse a brief sale, promotion, or event that either people are tweeting about directly, or can be easily related to topics people are tweeting about. The format will resemble regular tweets, and will, therefore, be dramatically different from “typical” advertising layouts; Promoted Tweets will more closely resemble a conversation among friends than an advertisement, or at least that is Twitter’s intention. When a user sees these Twitter promoted ads, they will have the ability to respond in the same manner that they do with all other tweets: they can retweet, reply, or follow the promoter.
For interested advertisers, signing up will initially be limited until Twitter smooths out all kinks in the new platform. After that time, it will become easier for companies to sign up and get tweeting. In the meantime, advertisers and SEO agencies should begin to brainstorm about potential topics and events that might be a good starting point for Promoted Tweets, as well as catchy, conversational, and tweet-friendly creative.
Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations