Twitter Pitches Plans to Sell Ads Against Logged-Out Users

Twitter was busy last week. Amid the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, its sales team pitched media agencies and brand marketers on multiple new features. As Ad Age reported earlier, Twitter trotted out an upcoming autoplay video ad product. It also began hawking ways to cash in on its newly-christened "logged-out" users, selling ads against tweets that appear elsewhere and splitting revenue with publishers. The Wall Street Journal reported the news on Friday: The social media company is planning to sell ads within streams of tweets on other publishers' apps and websites, people familiar with the matter said. Twitter laid out its initiative to media buyers in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the people said. For months, Twitter has laid the groundwork for extending its revenue reach on mobile, with MoPub, its mobile-ad network, and its new app service, Fabric. ESPN and Flipboard were cited during CES meetings. The publications are frequently used as examples in Twitter sales meetings, but no deals have been cut with the companies, an executive familiar with Twitter said. Among the pitches at CES was an improved home-page for logged-out users that would include paid products, according to executives Twitter pitched last week. To address flagging engagement, Twitter recently introduced a slate of features, including an "instant timeline," to attract more users. The website shown last week included a series of tiles featuring Twitter content, both images and text, clustered by subject matter, like entertainment and sports. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment. During an analyst conference in November, Twitter claimed 500 million visitors across the web see its content monthly -- well above its 284 million registered monthly users -- because they see tweets in other publications and through search. Executives then suggested the company could net money from those eyeballs -- about $2.50 in average revenue per user or around half its cut from logged-in users. It did not reveal specifics. Contributing: Tim Peterson

Twitter Pitches Plans to Sell Ads Against Logged-Out Users

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