Since Twitter has been having a hard time over the past few months fighting back Google and Facebook, the company has finally reconsidered other ways to become more visible for clients and to bring in more revenue. Twitter’s solution was to make more money from mobile apps, given that the market and technology are becoming a lot more accessible to clients.
This Tuesday, Twitter announced it has taken the decision to become a lot more aggressive when it comes to advertising on smartphones, in the attempt to make more money. The decision pertains to Apple’s iPhones and iOS based gadgets as well as Google’s wide list of Android devices.
It goes without saying that Twitter is tapping into a market with huge potential. Not only the company’s promoted tweets and trends will now be more accessible to the already existing 50 million monthly active Twitter users that access the social network using a smartphone, but the market is on the grow continuously.
The change is obvious. If until now, you would have to access Twitter on your iPhone or Android based smartphone to get access to promoted trends and promoted tweets, the adjustment allows Twitter to insert advertising throughout the mobile applications timeline.
According to a blog post by Twitter, the change will be implemented starting the coming weeks, but at the beginning only a few users will see the promoted tweets and trends on their smartphone’s app timeline.
Perhaps this will be exactly what Twitter has been waiting for so long. The company’s attempts to implement new strategies to bring in more revenue haven’t been exactly successful. At the same time, as Mark Read, chief executive of WPP Digital, pointed out earlier this year, Twitter isn’t exactly a “marketing phenomenon”, but “more of a journalistic” one. “If you talk to newspaper editors and people in the media, they are obsessed”, he added. And for good reason. Twitter puts news in their hands like no other.
As Adam Bain, head of revenue at Twitter, points out, “Twitter the product is five years old, Twitter the business is just slightly over a year old. We’ve done a lot in a short amount of time…Our motto has been to do it right, rather than do it right away”.
