Earlier this week, advertisements found their way into the streams of users of Hootsuite, a third-party Twitter client. Prior to that, users had seen ads make their way into the suggested accounts list, as well as users’ searches and trending topics. Now, it looks like these Twitter ads have made their way completely off the site and on to somewhere completely unexpected – Google’s Real-time Search results.
Danny Sullivan of Search Engline Land first noticed the ads today, noting that, “in a first ever move, Google is now carrying ads from someone else’s ad network – Twitters”.
The move has nothing to do with those inline ads Twitter just announced, but the ones we’ve seen in our Twitter searches for months now. Those ads – or Promoted Tweets – are appearing in the “Updates” section of Google Search, not the standard search page. Take a look at Sullivan’s shot of the ads in action:
Image via Search Engine Land.
According to Sullivan, Google sent the following statement and confirmed that there would be a 50/50 revenue split on the ads.
Twitter is pioneering advertising against short-form content, so it was a natural starting place for us. We’re certainly open to continue exploring other advertising models and systems, including those we might develop in-house.
Slowly but surely, Twitter’s ads are making their way into our lives. What’s your prediction – where will we see them next? Twitter.com itself? How about those widgets that live-stream Tweets on other sites? Maybe we’ll even start seeing them on the news channels, scrolling at the bottom of our screen…
