Direct Response Marketing

Twitter Rolls Out Self-Serve Ad Platform to Small Businesses

22 Feb, 2012 By: Jackie Jones

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SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter will expand its self-serve advertising platform, first launched to a select few brands in November 2011, to all small businesses next month, according to a post on the social-networking site’s official blog.

Twitter is partnering with American Express for the next phase of its self-serve ad platform, allowing American Express card members to join first. Additionally, the first 10,000 small businesses to sign up will receive $100 in free advertising from American Express.

“Successful small-business owners intuitively know how to build meaningful relationships with their customers. They were the first to use Twitter to talk with consumers in real time, and their creativity demonstrated Twitter’s potential as a marketing platform,” Twitter said on its blog. “Soon, small businesses based in the United States will have the chance to take their Twitter marketing efforts to a new level.”

The social networking site offered few details on specifics of the ad platform, expect to say it will involve the site’s Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products.

Twitter first experimented with new brand pages last year, offering a test phase of the platform to 21 select advertising partners including American Express, Best Buy, Disney Pixar, Chevrolet and PepsiCo., among others (Response This Week, Dec. 14, 2011). The pages aimed to give marketers more control of the content their followers are exposed of, and Twitter officials hoped the expansion would broaden the social-networking site’s appeal to all users.

“Communicating with users isn’t just about what you say, it’s also about how you say it,” Twitter said on its blog at the time. “Now, your profile page does more to help you make an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline and any other visuals.”

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