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Twitter begins trial run of subscription-based ad service

Twitter is testing a brand new ad service designed for power users and small businesses in mind.

Last week, the real-time social messaging platform began accepting invites for a new ads subscription service that handles all the heavy lifting of running promotional campaigns.

Here’s the gist of how it works. You can sign up to the program, which costs $99 a month. In exchange, Twitter takes care of the amplification of your user accounts and tweets.

For promoted tweets, Twitter will automatically create a campaign that can include the first 10 tweets you send each day. This won’t, however, include retweets, quote tweets or replies. It’s worth mentioning that subscribers to this service aren’t able to hand pick the tweets they’d like to promote. Twitter also notes that not every tweet added to this campaign will “serve an impression, and the extent each Tweet is promoted may vary based on performance.”

As far as targeting is concerned, users of the service can pick from one of two options. They can choose to promote their messages from a metro level, which targets advertising based on geographic location. Users are also able to select interest-level targeting to advertise their tweets and accounts.

To examine success, subscribers have a few different ways at their disposal to measure the service. Twitter’s native analytics platform can provide insights on audience, statistics on tweet activity as well as follower growth. Demographic breakdowns will also be available over the course of time for a subscriber. In addition, Twitter will offer biweekly updates as part of the service that give more information and data for users to analyze if it’s achieving their goals.

The first 30 days of the program is free to try. After that, the $99 bill kicks in, but users are free to cancel at anytime. Twitter notes that there aren’t any prorated refunds for those who opt out of the service in the middle of their billing cycles.

Since the program is in beta, Twitter is only extending invites to interested users. You can visit this landing page, which details the new service and sign up to request access. Twitter also spread the word about the program to users who’ve utilized ads before by reaching them directly via email.

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The launch of the new service comes at a time when Twitter is looking for ways to bolster its advertising revenue. According to Fortune, the social media platform experienced an eight percent drop in ad revenue last quarter to $489 million. In comparison, rival platform Facebook enjoyed a healthy stream of ad dollars, generating $9.16 billion in the last quarter.

The new service isn’t the first time Twitter has explored creating a premium platform for users. A few months ago, Twitter ran a survey to gauge interest in an advanced experience for Tweetdeck, the social company’s app for professionals. The Verge reported that Twitter described a premium version of TweetDeck would have “more powerful tools to help marketers, journalists, professionals, and others in our community find out what is happening in the world quicker, gain more insights, and see the broadest range of what people are saying on Twitter.”

Have you thought of using Twitter to reach your audience? Reach out to us for more insights on how to maximize your advertising potential on the platform.

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