Twitter launches mobile apps installation ad

Twitter has recently announced that it will formally launch a mobile apps installation ad for more customers after months of testing. The ads will appear in the Twitter stream and point directly to Apple's App Store or GooglePlay app page. Facebook has made a decent mobile advertising revenue with apps, and Twitter has tested it in the past few months. Twitter users may have seen similar ads in their own streams of information that would suggest they install applications such as Square or Spotify, or "Dragon Age: Heroes" and "Real car 3". Twitter said previous tests were progressing well.

This is expected to become Twitter's newest profitable product, and to accumulate more advertising revenue for the company at a time of slowing user growth. Most of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, which has doubled in the first quarter to $250.5 million trillion. But the company has yet to make a profit.

Mobile-Installation ads have become an important driver of Facebook's huge mobile advertising business, with a 59% per cent share of total revenue in the first quarter, up from 30% a year ago. Facebook launched a mobile apps installation ad at the end of 2012, and the company has gained a lot of revenue from its massive user data. Advertisers can locate target users according to their age, geographic location, gender and interest.

Twitter must prove that the company also has the same strong directional capabilities, although the specific patterns may be different. Advertisers can carry out promotional activities through Twitter's automated self-service system and reference keywords, interests, TV preferences and customized audiences. The ad will also be available via Twitter's mobile ad trading platform MoPub. Twitter says the platform has access to more than 1 billion stand-alone devices.

Application developers are actively advertising to increase downloads or get new users, especially in game applications.

Twitter's three major advertising offerings are based on text. But over the past year, the company has developed its own "card" technology to show richer content. The so-called "card" is a scalable Twitter message that supports rich media content so that advertisers can put more creative content into it. Mobile apps can be a great example of advertising revenue that is being added to Twitter.

Some of Adparlor's clients are involved in Twitter's app-installation advertising tests, and Meladen Lecauvic, the company's general manager, said the application, based on subscription services and flash-shopping, was particularly strong in the testing phase. While Twitter's users are getting a higher cost, Lecauvic revealed that the cost has fallen as customers become more aware of the way the message is released and the target users. In some promotional campaigns, he predicts that the cost of acquiring new users via Twitter has fallen below $5 trillion, close to a level that rivals Facebook.

The cost reduction may be the result of Twitter's adjustment to the product's pricing model. Twitter usually collects fees when a user interacts with an ad through a push or a point of praise, but in a mobile installation ad, it only costs if the user clicks on a button that points to the App Store or Google Play or opens the ad directly on Twitter.

"We want to be as efficient as possible so advertisers don't pay for clicks they don't care about," he said. Kelton Linn Kelton Lynn, Twitter product manager. (PEI)