14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is finally getting serious about its ad business. It's been working towards this for a few years now, but it is now almost ready to open up its ad space to everyone via a self-serve model. This should give smaller companies, two small to warrant the attention of Twitter sales rep, the chance to advertise on the site, without blowing their budget.
What's more, it should also give Twitter a nice boost in revenue, a needed one at that.
Twitter has more money in the bank that it knows what to do with them, but they didn't come from ad sales they came from investors.
It can afford to sit on its pile of cash for quite a while longer, but it will eventually have to start making some serious money.
Self-serve ads, which opens up Twitter to potentially countless new advertisers, are one of the easiest and safest way of doing that.
Twitter is now opening up the self-serve platform to some businesses, but will start rolling it out to all late next month.
Knowing Twitter, it is going to take several months until everyone is allowed in. In the meantime, it's allowing some businesses in and even giving them $100, €76.6-worth of credit to get started.
"We’ve partnered with American Express to make it easy for small business owners to advertise on Twitter. American Express Cardmembers and merchants based in the U.S. will be invited to try this new advertising solution before anyone else, and American Express will give $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 eligible businesses to sign up," Twitter announced.
Small advertisers will be able to use most of the type of ads currently available on Twitter, promoted tweets, promoted accounts and so on. Ads will also be targeted at a specific geographical area, making them more appealing to local businesses.