Twitter's Promoted Tweets is it a Hit or Bust?

Twitter's Promoted Tweets have been online now for a select few, for the past couple of months. Twitter has stated that Promoted Tweets have been "successful beyond our wildest dreams." This was stated by COO Dick Costolo. A promotional offer by Virgin America - 50% off for the first 500 travelers - sold out in three hours. Bravo TV used Promoted Tweets to invite consumers to discover their "green IQ" on Bravo’s website, and the tweet generated 300 retweets - the maximum number allowed - in one day, generating 200,000 impressions.

The company is currently adding another dozen advertisers to the program on top of the five advertisers that participated in the launch. By Q4, they expect participants to be in the hundreds. They look to start to ramp this up aggressively in Q3 and then really blow it open in Q4, Costolo said.



You will see Tweets promoted by their partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. Twitter strongly believes that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. They'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 (see graphic above), 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. 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.