Twitter introduces Stories-like ads in Fleets

"Fleet ads are full-screen billboards for advertisers. Appearing in between Fleets from people, these ads are all about connecting your message with the everyday.

New Delhi: In a bid to take on Facebook and Snapchat, Twitter has announced to bring Stories-like vertical format, full-screen ads to its Fleets feature for the first time. Fleets are disappearing tweets that sit in a row at the top of users’ Twitter handles on smartphones.

“Fleet ads are full-screen billboards for advertisers. Appearing in between Fleets from people, these ads are all about connecting your message with the everyday.

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Fleet ads are a space for brands to be creative: go behind the scenes, have a creator take over your account, or share a hot take,” said Twitter senior product manager Justin Hoang and Austin Evers, global product marketing manager. Twitter launched Fleets globally in November last year to give people a new, ephemeral way to join the conversation and share momentary thoughts. People can Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos or videos and customize their Fleets with various backgrounds, stickers, and text options. “Starting today, Fleet ads will be visible to a limited group of people in the US on iOS and Android,” the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

“Fleet ads support images and video in 9:16. For video, the format supports up to 30-seconds of content. Brands can also add a “swipe-up” call-to-action,” Twitter said. For Fleets ads, advertisers will get standard Twitter Ads metrics including impressions, profile visits, clicks, website visits, and more. In April, Twitter reported that its ad revenue grew 32 percent (on-year) to $899 million, and total ad engagement jumped 11 per cent.

According to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the company started Fleets not to build a storage product within Twitter, “but to solve the problem of people not wanting to tweet because they appear to be staying around too long”. “We certainly have seen a different audience than we normally see, but we still have much to learn and a lot to figure out in terms of like, where it goes from here,” he had said.