As Facebook chooses to distance itself from content publishers, Twitter is doubling down on its media partnerships with a new ad product: Sponsored Moments.
The social network has been experimenting with the feature with partners for some time, but now any Moment created by one of Twitter’s 200-something In-Stream Sponsorship publishers can be sponsored by interested advertisers.
As the first such Sponsored Moment appears, the ad product allows an advertiser to, in essence, turn any piece of journalism on Twitter into content marketing, with banner image selection and the ability to insert interstitial tweets.
As an extension of Twitter’s In-Stream Sponsorships program, Sponsored Moments offer monetization options for the company’s partner publishers in addition to Twitter itself.
“The goal with Sponsored Moments, as with all In-Stream Sponsorships, is tight alignment between advertiser messaging and partner content,” said Mike Park, Twitter’s vice president of emerging content products, in the announcement.
While Facebook has responded to the fake news accusations of the past few years by dropping out of the editorial game, Twitter is hoping to strengthen its ties with publishers and protecting brands on its platform with additional oversight. Last month, Twitter announced it would be enforcing its rules on hate speech and abusive behavior much more strictly.
“By working with premium publishers as part of an In-Stream Sponsorship, brands know exactly which partner they are working with, and can develop deep brand integrations within that partner’s content,” added Park.
Brands can only sponsor Moments posted by official Twitter publishing partners, allowing Twitter to protect brand safety by keeping a much smaller playing field. YouTube has been making the same efforts, though the wild west environment of user-generated content was much less receptive.
Twitter first announced they were testing an ad offering in this vein, called “Promoted Moments,” just two weeks after Moments first launched in 2015, but the difference between it and the final version are stark, further emphasizing Twitter’s commitment to editorial credibility.
“For publishers, Sponsored Moments is an end-to-end contextual solution for publishing and monetizing all forms of content on Twitter,” Park wrote. “It allows publishers to easily do what they do best: produce and tell stories about events.”
