Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users, initially only when a user has conducted a Twitter search function.
Users will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. Twitter says it will attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate.
Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted" when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
Twitter says it wants to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in user timelines in a way that is useful. That means the program will get a slow introduction and will be user tested in a variety of ways.
Twitter argues that all promoted tweets are organic Tweets, which makes them different from traditional search advertising and social advertising. Promoted tweets will also be timely, Twitter says. "Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment," Twitter says on its blog.
There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet, the company says. Promoted tweets must resonate with users. That means if users don't interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the promoted tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Rretweeting it, the promoted tweet will disappear.
Twitter blog
