The Associated Press is the latest news organization to experiment with trying to make money from Twitter by using its feed to advertise for other companies.
The AP announced Monday that it will share sponsored tweets from Samsung throughout this week for the International CES taking place in Las Vegas. The news service will let Samsung post two tweets per day to the AP's Twitter account, which has more than 1.5 million users, and each of these tweets will be labeled "SPONSORED TWEETS."
This marks the first time that the AP has sold advertising on its Twitter feed, and the company says it spent months developing guidelines to pave the way for this and other new media business models.
For this particular promotion, Samsung will provide the sponsored tweets and non-editorial staff at the AP will handle the publishing side. In this way, the company hopes to maintain a clear dividing line between its editorial and advertising operations on Twitter.
"We are thrilled to be taking this next step in social media," said Lou Ferrara, the AP managing editor overseeing its social media efforts, in a statement. "As an industry, we must be looking for new ways to develop revenues while providing good experiences for advertisers and consumers. At the same time, advertisers and audiences expect AP to do that without compromising its core mission of breaking news."
Other publishers have dabbled in Twitter ads, including The Atlantic, National Journal, The Times-Picayune and BreakingNews.com.