Twitter is starting to test ads on its Fleets feature, which is essentially the platform’s version of Instagram Stories. Ads are, of course, a common practice for many other social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. However, this is the first time Twitter has tried to implement vertical ads on its platform.
Twitter revealed the Fleets ad testing in a blog post.
“Today we’re launching a new experiment — Fleets ads, which will bring full-screen, vertical format ads to Twitter for the first time,” the blog post states. “We’re excited to partner with a handful of advertisers for this experiment. Starting today, Fleets ads will be visible to a limited group of people in the US on iOS and Android.”
The ads come in a full-screen, vertical format. According to Twitter, the ads will play in between Fleets from the people you’re following. They’ll last up to 30 seconds, which is much shorter than the 120-second limit on Instagram and 60-second limit on TikTok.
Providing analytics for advertisers
Currently, the feature is open to a small group of advertisers. So, for the time being, you likely won’t be seeing the ads often. Twitter apparently wants to see how its users engage with the ads before a massive rollout of the feature.
Advertisers who can use the feature have access to metrics on their Fleets ads. This means they’ll have access to impressions, profile visits, clicks and website visits. For their video ads, they’ll have access to viewership, 6-second video viewership, starts, completes and quartile reporting.
What does this mean for creators?
Twitter has not offered any indication that creators will receive money for the ads playing after their Fleets. By comparison, creators on competing social media platforms may earn revenue from ads that are inserted into their content.
However, Twitter recently has been investing more into video-centered features. Since it’s taking some inspiration from Instagram, hopefully Twitter will roll out more creator-centered features for monetization in the future. Though, at this time, it’s unclear how quickly Twitter will be able to make that happen.