Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Can Now Run On Other Websites And Apps

Twitter is expanding the potential audience for its Promoted Tweet ad campaigns by syndicating them to other services, starting with Flipboard and Yahoo Japan.

In a blog post about the new ad capabilities, the company notes that tweets can already “flow from Twitter to other mediums seamlessly” — so why not do the same for Twitter’s ads? The post points to a number of tools that Twitter offers for syndicating tweets, including Twitter for Websites and its new Fabric platform, and says that there were “185 Billion tweet impressions off of Twitter” during the third quarter of last year.

As an example, the company says Nissan could run a Promoted Tweet campaign on Twitter, then have the same ads, with the same creative elements and targeting, run in Flipboard.

“Best of all, because Flipboard already integrates Tweets into the app, the Promoted Tweet will have the same look and feel that is native to the Flipboard experience,” the post says.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that this was in the works, and that Twitter mentioned Flipboard and ESPN’s SportsCenter app in a presentation to ad buyers at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Today’s announcement doesn’t mention SportsCenter or any other apps besides the two initial partners, but the company does write, “This is the first of many opportunities to create such campaigns.” (It also says this provides “great content and monetization opportunities for our syndication partners,” so presumably publishers are getting a cut of the revenue.)

Twitter has struggled in recent quarters with concerns about slowing user growth. If that trend continues, these new capabilities could be an important way for Twitter to make money outside of Twitter itself. (It has also said it will increase monetization by targeting logged out and casual visitors.)

Facebook has also been working to expand its ad capabilities, relaunching its Atlas ad platform last fall to support cross-device ad targeting for outside publishers.