Ever since Twitter secured as much as $100 million dollars funding last year, speculation went wild on what kind of business model they will adopt. In November, Twitter COO Dick Costolo confirmed that the first piece to fall into place is the Ad platform which he described as “fascinating. Non-traditional. And people will love it… It’s going to be really cool.”

What We Know So Far?

Now we are getting closer to the day when this Ad-platform will be introduced publicly and it maybe as soon as next month during the South by Southwest Conference. According to the Wall Street Journal, the long awaited Twitter platform will look something like this:

• The ads will be tied to Twitter search, displaying only the ads that are relevant to the search term.
• The ads will be 140 or fewer characters, 3rd party applications will have the option to display the ads and Twitter will share revenue with them if they do.
• Twitter will work with ad agencies at first but will move to a Google like self-serve model later on.
• Non invasive and will be clearly marked as “sponsored” tweets

What we already know about the Ad-platform leaves a lot of speculations running in everyone’s head in relation to how it will work and what impact it will have on Twitter’s ever expanding user base.

What Will the Ads Look like?

An Ad.ly ad

Will the ads be clearly labeled like ad.ly’s In-Stream ads? Or will they be more like “I am having the new Italian burger at McDonalds” and “My favorite Chips is so-n-so“ or the direct in your face kind of “Click this link and 20% off of your next purchase”.

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