Your Twitter Search, Now Served With a Side of Ads

Twitter is getting into the search advertising business — sort of.

Promoted accounts will now begin to appear at the top of Twitter's search, providing a new selling point for the company's primary marketing opportunity.

Twitter offers promoted accounts as the primary way for marketers to gain paid exposure on the microblogging platform. More than 90% of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, particularly mobile.

Twitter will pair promoted accounts with related search queries, the company said.

"With this launch, relevant Promoted Accounts can be presented to users in search results along with recommendations of people to follow," Twitter product manager Nipoon Malhotra wrote in a blog post. "We automatically select relevant search queries for presenting Promoted Accounts based on an advertiser’s targeting choices, so no additional action is required for your business to access this capability." Read more...