Twitter Opens Self-Serve Ad Platform Widely to Small Businesses

After making the platform available to just a few advertisers in November, Twitter will expand its self-service ad product to all small businesses next month.

Twitter is partnering with American Express for the initiative, which offers preferential treatment for American Express cardmembers. Such cardmembers will be invited first and AmEx will give $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 businesses to sign up

In a blog post announcing the move, Twitter was vague about what, exactly, the the new small business advertising will be like, except that it will involve Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Twitter reps could not be reached for further comment. However, Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of global revenue, tweeted Thursday night that the initiative involves Twitter’s self-service advertising.

That self-service platform went live in November, but was only open to a handful of advertisers at the time. That offering was a long time in the making. Twitter introduced a turn-key ad solution in December 2010, but it took almost a year until it was operational.

Meanwhile, over the last year, Twitter had refined its advertising offerings by introduducing geotargeting and a dashboard that gives marketers a deeper dive into the company’s data. With the former, advertisers can choose among 210 designated market areas in the U.S., which appeals to small businesses with a limited geographic footprint. The dashboard, meanwhile, offers new information on who is following a brand and what their interests are, among other data.

Twitter, a private company, doesn’t disclose the amount of revenues it currently draws from advertising. However, eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s overall revenues — which are primarily from advertising — will hit $259.9 million in 2012.