The news that Twitter was unveiling its Promoted Accounts today wasn’t the only thing they had to share. Buried below that in their post this morning, Twitter also revealed that they’re now starting to roll-out Promoted Products to third-party partners. And with that, they’ll be sharing revenues with them.
To be clear, Twitter has always said that they planned to open Promoted Products (which include Promoted Trends, Tweets, and now Accounts) to third-parties. But today it’s finally becoming a reality with their first such partner: HootSuite. That service will now be able to run Promoted Tweets in search and highlight Promoted Trends on the service, Twitter notes. And again, they’ll share revenue with Twitter on these features if they choose to implement them.
I’ve asked Twitter for the breakdown of the revenue sharing, and I’ll update if I hear back. I’m sure they won’t give me actual numbers, but I’m curious if the rev share is a flat rate or if it varies by client and/or usage. If so, this could potentially mean some not insignificant revenue for huge clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic.
For now, only Promoted Tweets and Trends will be available to third-parties, but you can expect Promoted Accounts to follow if they’re successful on twitter.com.
From the post:
This is an important step for these partners and for the many highly active Twitter users who spend considerable time on third-party applications. As with all Twitter launches, we’ll review the initial feedback and determine where we take it from here.
In the post, Twitter also took the time to acknowledge that they’ve been tweaking the Promoted Products a bit. As we wrote about last week, Promoted Trends are now at the top of the Trending Topics list.
Twitter also says that they’re currently working with over 40 advertisers, and that 80 percent have been repeat buyers so far.