Google Starts Using Promoted Accounts On Twitter; Microsoft Uses Promoted Trends

It looks like one of the early adopters of Twitter’s “Promoted Accounts” advertising program is … Google. I took the screenshot at left just moments ago when I visited my Twitter home page. Right at the top, under the “Who to follow” heading, is an ad encouraging me to follow Google Mobile’s Twitter account, @GoogleMobile.

Twitter just formally launched Promoted Accounts a little more than a month ago with “only a handful of companies” in the program. I’m waiting to hear from Twitter if Google has been added as a new advertiser and if Promoted Accounts is being opened to additional companies/users who want to advertise.

Promoted Accounts is algorithmic in choosing when and what advertisements to show, so you may not see the same ad as me. I refreshed Twitter.com several times and never saw any other Google accounts being promoted — just Google Mobile.

Google has never been adverse to advertising on other web properties. We wrote earlier this year about Google ads appearing on Bing and The Next Web spotted Google ads on Facebook a couple months ago.

Postscript: TechCrunch points out something I didn’t notice on first glance — Microsoft is advertising “windowsphone” as a Promoted Trend. Don’t know who bought the ad space first, though. So, here’s an update to the image above.