Micro-blogging platform Twitter is getting ready to launch a location-based advertising tool for small businesses.
This is according to Dick Costello, the new CEO of Twitter, who told the New York Times this week that the product would likely launch in 2011.
The company has been experimenting with different advertising types, including sponsored tweets and ‘promoted accounts’. But, while these approaches have brought in some revenue, the figures are reported to be relatively small – and certainly not large enough to sustain the business through its evolution.
Businesses will be able to work out who best to serve their ads to by looking at a combination of factors, including the location given on users’ profiles, as well as the other accounts that a specific user follows.
The location-based nature of this advertising solution is in keeping with Twitter’s evolution. The service has recently offered all web users the opportunity to ‘attach’ their location to tweets, allowing followers to see where a certain user is when they post.
The service could be a real contender for Foursquare, which currently leads the market in location-based promotion.
