Like Facebook, Twitter was focused on in-stream ads and leveraged organic social activity in the social media site. The two social media giants' similarity was not coincidental though. There was a consensus around the user stream being the ideal location for ad placements in social media. The introduction of new ad formats and capabilities in Twitter followed this consensus, creating a new way for both marketers and brands to reach their audience in the site.

Right now, Twitter's advertising ecosystem consisted of four formats, namely promoted trends, promoted tweets, keyword targeting, and video ads. Promoted trend was introduced in 2010, aiming to help brands encourage conversation around certain topics. For this, Twitter currently charged US200,000 per day from last year's US$150.000. Promoted tweets were basically still tweets which functioned as ads and target specific users and were also transferable to mobile. Keyword targeting was introduced a few months back to help advertisers reach their target audience "at the right moment, in the right context". Video ads were also relatively new. Videos embedded in a tweet can have a pre-roll ad.

For Twitter joining the internet ad bandwagon seemed to be a good thing for the company, as revenues from such hit record-breaking double-digit, according to IAB's research. Internet ad revenue reached US$27 billion in 2012. Also, the mobile platform rose 111% to US$3.4 billion for the second year in a row.