Twitter said Tuesday that its ads will start popping up on the news-reading app Flipboard and Yahoo Japan, a deal designed to expand the reach of its ads beyond users of the social media service.
Businesses try to sell products and services on Twitter by showing users “promoted tweets,” which target certain customers based on the accounts they follow, their gender, what they post about and more.
Now companies will be able to display these tweets on Flipboard and Yahoo Japan, which unlike an online banner ad can be easily shared with others through a retweet.
“For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience,” Ameet Ranadive, Twitter”s senior director of product, wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
A Twitter spokesperson declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal with Flipboard and Yahoo Japan.
Flipboard said the deal was a natural fit.
“Because the promoted tweets are served right in the Twitter feed on Flipboard, it”s a very engaging native ad experience — being able to share stories, videos and beautiful galleries right in the content flow on Flipboard,” Flipboard Chief Technology Officer Eric Feng said.
The announcement came two days before Twitter is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings report.
Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, wrote in a note Tuesday that Twitter”s deal with Flipboard could shift the perception from investors that Twitter won”t be able to make money from its mobile app.
“We think investors are overly bearish on Twitter today much like Facebook back then,” Peck wrote. “Further, we think as Twitter signs more business development deals like these that not only will monetization accelerate, but monthly average users as well.”
The company”s shares Tuesday increased 6.2 percent to $39.79 a share following the news of the deal.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast that on average Twitter will report fourth-quarter sales of $453 million or 6 cents a share excluding certain one-time expenses.
In the third quarter, the social network reported it had a net loss of $175.5 million on $361.3 million in sales.
Emails to Yahoo Japan were not immediately returned Tuesday.
Contact Queenie Wong at at 408-920-2706; follow her atTwitter.com/QwongSJ.
