Twitter users will soon begin seeing advertisements in their timelines when accessing the social network from their iPhone or Android device.
Twitter announced Tuesday that it plans to expand its ad program in the coming weeks to start showing Promoted Tweets, or tweets that have been paid for by advertisers, in users' timelines on the Twitter for iPhone and Android apps.
Users will only see Promoted Tweets in their timelines from brands they already follow, Twitter said. But, in addition to Promoted Tweets, iPhone and Android users will also begin seeing promoted recommendations on their lists of Who to Follow, just like they already do on the main Twitter.com site.
"It has been nearly two years since we introduced Promoted Tweets, the first in our suite of Promoted Products," Twitter said in a blog post. "In that time, people around the world have increasingly accessed Twitter from a mobile device. Today, we are taking an important next step in making our Promoted Products available to those users."
Previously, mobile users only saw ads in search results on the iPhone and Android apps, and on the mobile Web version of Twitter (m.twitter.com). Rolling them out to users' timelines on the Twitter for iPhone and Android apps makes them much more visible.
The advertiser-backed tweets will appear in Android and iPhone users' timelines just like any other tweet, Twitter said. They will show up just once, and will flow with all the other tweets as users' scroll through their timelines.
Users can dismiss any Promoted Tweets they don't like with a single swipe.
Twitter first announced its Promoted Tweets ad platform in April 2010. At the time, it partnered with several specific advertisers, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America. If you happened to search for those brands on Twitter, the top search result would be an ad from those sponsors. At launch, Promoted Tweets were only included in search results, but Twitter said it would eventually expand the program. By June, it added those Promoted Tweets to its trending topics bar.
In October, Twitter officially unveiled its Promoted Accounts program, which added advertisers to Twitter's "Who to Follow" suggestions list. It also announced a "promoted products" option that allowed third-party apps to display promoted tweets and trends. In September, Twitter said Promoted Tweets would start showing up in the stream of tweets from people you follow.