Twitter has been releasing new features this past month to entice users as it figures a way to increase its revenues and profits. Ads have been its major source of revenue and Twitter is bringing them to fleets.
Fleets were launched in early November last year and is a cloned format from Instagram Stories which got cloned from Snapchat. Fleets got mixed reactions from Twitter users when it launched.
It looks like this feature has been getting a lot of engagement and now Twitter wants to bring full screen ads.
The giant social network will be partnering with select advertisers. The ads will be visible to a handful of US users on Android and iOS.
Just like Instagram Story ads, Fleet ads will support images and video in 9:16 format. It’s also worth noting that the videos will be up to 30 seconds long.
Twitter’s ad revenue grew 32%year over year to $899 million, and total ad engagement rose 11 %.
Companies that’ll use the Fleet ads will be able to include a “swipe up” call-to-action plus access to standard Twitter ad metrics, including impressions, profile visits, clicks, website visits, and other information.
Twitter is still figuring out how its audiences are using Fleets. The company says that they learn how vertical full-screen ads perform not only for Fleets but also future iterations of other full-screen formats.
“As we continue to bring forward more ways for people to talk and connect on Twitter, we’re constantly thinking about how we can extend these new formats into new offerings for our advertisers and partners,” reads the announcement on Twitter’s blog.
Twitter is planning to add more features to Fleets.
This announcement has riled up critics.
“Other platforms that added stories spent a *lot* more time polishing the product experience before choking it with ads. This feels way premature,” said Casey Newton.