About a month ago, talk began to surface that Twitter would soon begin to roll out ads (that is, their Promoted Tweets) in user timelines. The truth is that they’ve been talking about this possibility for a while. And they’ve even tested it with third party partners like Hootsuite. But today comes the true test. Twitter will start placing them on Twitter.com.
To be clear, the sponsored Tweets will only appear in your timeline if you already follow the account that has paid for the spot. If that’s the case, a single Promoted Tweet will appear at (or near) the top of your main timeline when you log in to twitter.com for the first time in any given day. As you get new Tweets, these Promoted Tweets will be pushed down just like regular Tweets. But if you refresh the page, the ad will appear at the top of the timeline again, is our understanding.
These ads will also be clearly marked as “Promoted” with an orange arrow icon below the tweet (this is the way Promoted Tweets and Trends are currently shown on the sidebar or in search). And it will say the full company name of the company that is doing the promotion (just in case their Twitter handle isn’t perfectly clear). These Tweets can also be dismissed from your timeline with one click.
More to come. For now, read more on Twitter’s blog.
Update: A full talk with Twitter’s head of monetization, Adam Bain, on the move.