Twitter announced today an update which will impact its mobile applications on iPhone and Android: it’s bringing additional “Promoted Products” to the mobile platform, specifically Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets. The Promoted Products suite of advertising products, which includes Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets (in search and in the timeline), and Promoted Accounts, have been available on the web for some time, including the mobile web interface at m.twitter.com. In select cases, they’ve also been available within the native applications.
However, with the recent app updates being launched today, Promoted Accounts will now be added to both Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, with Promoted Tweets to soon follow.
For both of the new products, Twitter says the experience will be the same as it is now on the web. The Promoted Accounts will appear in your list of “Who to Follow” recommendations within the app, for example.
Meanwhile, with Promoted Tweets, these will appear both in the timeline and within search. When in the timeline, the tweets will show up like any other, and won’t stay “stuck” at the top of the screen like they do in search. As new tweets roll in, the Promoted Tweet will fall off the page. Meanwhile, in search (which was previously available) the Promoted Tweet will appear at the top of the screen. And here’s a neat trick – if the Promoted Tweet isn’t relevant to you, you can swipe it to remove it.
Twitter says that, at first, only a small number of users will see Promoted Tweets at the top of their timelines from brands they already follow. The company did not provide a timeframe for how long the complete roll out will take.
You can avoid the ads for now by using a third-party client (Tweetbot is a great backup choice, if you’re looking for one).
In January, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, speaking a the D: Dive Into Media conference, said that Twitter’s advertising business is growing and the engagement rates on Promoted Tweets, Trends and profiles (i.e., Accounts) is high. “We’ve figured out the business,” he said at the time. “The advertising model is working, we just have to scale it.”
Obviously, moving all the ad products to mobile is a good first step.