In what year did Twitter launch Promoted Tweets?

Twitter launched Promoted Tweets in 2010. On April 13 that year, the company announced paid advertising that allowed businesses to place selected tweets in prominent positions, initially including Twitter search results.

Promoted Tweets were designed to resemble ordinary posts while giving advertisers greater reach. The system became one of Twitter’s central advertising products: businesses could pay to highlight messages, while users could interact with them through normal actions such as replies, retweets, and favorites. Twitter described the idea as similar in principle to sponsored search advertising, including Google’s AdWords model.

The initial 2010 announcement was only the beginning of the advertising platform’s expansion. Twitter introduced a self-service advertising system for selected American Express users and merchants in 2012, and promoted tweets later expanded to mobile devices and broader groups of advertisers. Promoted Accounts and other ad formats followed. A common mistake is to date the feature to 2012 because that was when self-service and mobile-related developments became more visible; the original launch announcement belongs to 2010.