Taking yet another page out of Facebook’s playbook, Twitter is introducing app install ads on its platform.
App install ads are advertisements for other apps, which, if clicked on, directly lead to a download page for that app. Facebook’s found these to ads to be extremely lucrative, and now Twitter’s asking for a slice of the pie.
An app-install ad works by including a call to action that allows the user to click and download the advertised app there and then. Clicking the link will take the user to the app store and return back to the Twitter home screen once the app starts downloading.
According to Re/code’s Peter Kafka, Twitter is already testing out its app ads and will roll them out within the next few weeks.
Here’s how they will look, as spotted by the editor-in-chief of ReadWrite, Owen Thomas:
Saw my first Twitter app-download ad, from @Square. pic.twitter.com/dzOfI9vO3w
— Owen Thomas (@owenthomas) April 4, 2014
This is only the latest type of ad that Twitter will be introducing as part of its huge push towards monetization. The Wall Street Journal reports that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo unveiled 15 new types of advertisements that the platform will be introducing in the next few months.
From WSJ:
Twitter’s top executives, including CEO Dick Costolo, showed off a sampling of these new ad offerings to a troop of visiting ad industry executives last week, according to a person who attended the meeting. Whereas Twitter Cards is currently limited to seven predetermined formats, executives suggested the product will become a more open platform that would give marketers more creative freedom to come up with their own uses of Cards. Twitter, for example, showed how Cards can be used to encourage users to sign up for sweepstakes and contests with one-click sharing of their email addresses.
