Twitter Self-Service Ads and Small Businesses

Changes in social networking advertising has been a hot topic these past few weeks, and just a few days ago, Twitter became a part of these topics. Twitter has announced its plans to offer a self-service tool at the end of the year, similar to the tool currently being offered by Google or Facebook.

Before it completely launches this tool, Twitter has partnered with American Express to offer 10,000 qualified America Express cardholding businesses a chance to test out the tool. Each business will receive $100 from American Express to go towards these ads. (We can only infer from their news that it’s simply American Express reserving $100 worth of ads for each business on Twitter.) The ads will be similar to the promoted Tweets users currently see in their newsfeeds. (These ads are currently offered to brands, but at a high minimum spend, cutting out small businesses from using the ads.)

Businesses can sign up at http://ads.twitter.com/amex.

I’m interested to see how this pans out. I wonder what type of engagement rates businesses will be seeing from the ads, and what these engagements will ultimately do for the brands. Twitter is a great way to start a conversation with followers, and I think brands that do it right will see users eager to engage.

-Bryan Nagy