Twitter Extends Marketer Visibility With Promoted Trends

Twitter has begun offering advertisers significantly more exposure on its website with an extension of its Promoted Tweets marketing platform, dubbed "Promoted Trends."

The service essentially allows marketers to place a sponsored phrase at the bottom of Twitter's trending topics list, which links through to search results for that topic. Sponsored posts are clearly marked with a yellow "Promoted" button alongside them.

The extension is by no means a major update, but trending topics appear on every user's homepage, potentially reaching a larger audience than the company's Promoted Tweet ads which currently only appear when users search for specific keywords.

For example, Disney is currently testing the service to promote its Toy Story 3 movie. Rather than only reaching users that search for the movie specifically, a sponsored link is now placed on the right hand side of users' homepages below organic trending terms. Users that click on the link are presented with unfiltered search results, but a persistent Promoted Tweet from Disney sits at the top of the search results page.

According to information posted on Twitter's help site, Promoted Trends can only relate to topics that are already trending, but haven't yet made it into the top 10. If a topic is already being talked about, therefore, marketers will have the opportunity to pay to have it included in the list.

Twitter says the test will run for an indefinite period, depending on its success, and that Promoted Trends are currently visible to users globally.