Twitter Testing Ad Placements in Tweet Reply Threads

Twitter’s looking to expand its ad inventory with a new placement option within the reply threads of tweets.

Twitter is a free service, which means it relies on advertising to generate revenue. The more (and more effective) the ads are, the more money Twitter makes. With that in mind, Bruce Falck, Twitter Revenue Product Lead, has announced a new test is being carried out globally on both iOS and Android versions of the Twitter app.

Starting today, we’re trying something different and testing a new ad format in Tweet conversations. If you’re a part of this test (which is global; on iOS & Android only), you’ll see ads after the first, third or eighth reply under a Tweet. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/kvIGeYt2vp

— bruce.falck() 🦗 (@boo) October 13, 2021

The format is likely to change during testing, with Falck explaining, “We’ll test different frequencies, layouts, contextually relevant ads, different insertion points, etc. And we’ll examine our learnings and figure out if it’s something we want to make permanent.” Falck also confirmed that creators will likely be able to opt-in to this ad feature and “get a cut of the ad revenue.”

If you are part of the test, expect to start seeing ads appear between replies in your tweet conversations. Falck says the ads can appear after the first, third, or eighth tweet within conversations and that Twitter sees this as “a big opportunity to build an ad offering that creates value and aligns incentives for creators and advertisers.” Of course, it needs to be tested and tweaked before becoming a core feature of the service, or scrapped if it simply doesn’t work.

This probably isn’t the sort of Twitter test you’d want to see, but it’s not surprising. Twitter has been eager to find new sources of revenue for both itself and its most prolific users, ranging from Blue subscriptions to Tip Jar donations. Ads in replies could not only improve Twitter’s bottom line, but attract creators used to making money from sponsored Instagram and TikTok posts.