Twitter to offer off-platform promoted tweets

Twitter plans to offer advertisers a new type of ad: Promoted tweets and videos that appear in other apps.

The move is facilitated by MoPub, a mobile ad exchange Twitter bought in September 2013 which allows advertisers to buy mobile app-install and app-engagement ads on Twitter, as well as on the thousands of apps within MoPub’s network. This means Twitter advertisers can use that network of thousands of apps to extend their promoted videos and tweet campaigns.

How will it work? Marketers can run promoted tweets or videos on an app in MoPub’s network, which will hit all users of the app. If the user wants to retweet the promoted tweet seen in the app, clicking on the ad would take the user back to Twitter.

“Today when our clients when run ads on Twitter they can reach an audience of 300 million monthly active users,” Ameet Randive, senior director of revenue products at Twitter, told Ad Age. With the new offering, he said, advertisers “can reach over 700 million people” with promoted tweets and videos by running those on apps through the Audience Platform. “We’re helping them with this trend where consumers are spending much more time on mobile, and spending more time within apps.”