Twitter is for the first time taking its promoted tweets to other sites besides its own as part of its continuing quest to boost revenue amid apparent slowing user growth.
The social media company has partnered with Flipboard and Yahoo! Japan to have ads usually seen only on Twitter brought to a much wider audience.
It looks like a shrewd move by Twitter. If it pays off, it could give the company some valuable breathing space – as well as income – as it figures out how to boost its user base at a more rapid rate, an issue that’s been a cause of concern among executives and investors for some time.
“For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience,” the company’s Ameet Ranadive said in a post announcing the move. “Twitter syndicated ads will be seen by users within Twitter content sections on third-party properties, as well as within third-party content areas.”
Ranadive also posted an example of how an ad on one of the sites might look (right), adding that the new program is designed to give advertisers “an almost infinite capacity to create large-scale, rich and well-targeted advertising campaigns across a variety of platforms.”
The deal with Flipboard and Yahoo! Japan will see both firms taking a cut of ad revenue, and if the move to take its ads beyond its user base of 284 million users works well for Twitter, we can certainly expect to see more third-party sites getting involved in the coming months.
[Source: Twitter]