Twitter Brings Promoted Accounts to Timelines to Reach Mobile Users
Twitter is bringing a new and more visible ad format that promotes advertiser accounts on the service to users’ mobile tweet streams.
The company has had promoted accounts since October 2010, and they appear in a “who to follow” module along with organic recommendations tailored to users’ perceived interests. While the ads are fairly prominent on the desktop version of Twitter, appearing alongside users’ streams, they had gotten very little visibility within Twitter’s mobile apps, where they’re effectively smothered by other functionality and relegated to an obscure corner.
Since 76% of Twitter’s monthly users on average were accessing the service from a mobile device in the third quarter, it makes sense that the company is looking for new ways to grow mobile revenue. Ad revenue from mobile already constitutes more than 70% of Twitter’s total, however, so its numbers are moving in the right direction.
