Microblogging site Twitter is launching the first phase of its Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of advertising partners.

Published: 14 Apr 2010

Microblogging site Twitter is launching the first phase of its Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of advertising partners.

The list of partners includes Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America -- with more to come.

According to Twitter, Promoted Tweets “are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organisations want to highlight to a wider group of users”.

The company shared that users will start to see Tweets promoted by Twitter’s partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.

“ We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate. Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand,” stated the company.

Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting.

Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

Distinction

“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising,” explained the company.

Promoted Tweets will also be timely.

“Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.”

There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet, added Twitter.

“Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don’t interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.”