Twitter is now conducting trials with advertisers for placement of new ads in their “Trending Topics” section, rumored to sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Trending Topics, located on the Home page of Twitter, is an area that highlights real-time topics that are most chatted about within the social network. This new advertising roll out works in conjunction with “Promoted Tweets” platform recently launched in April, which was created as a revenue model for Twitter and a way for brands to increase interaction with fans through sponsoring “tweets” that appear in Twitter search results.

With the new ad platform Trending Topics, advertisers will be able to incorporate their own “term” into the list of Twitter’s trending topics listed on the right hand side of users newsfeeds (image shown right). Once a user clicks on the term, a “promoted tweet” would appear on top of the real-time trending newsfeed that appears (image shown below). A bit sneaky right?

A few questions come to mind as I allow my mind to muster on this new advertising roll out from Twitter. Isn’t the idea of promoting paid trends, a disingenuous way to advertise, as users are led to click on words that don’t actually correspond to a trending topic? Although Twitter has fought against becoming a platform for advertisers, these new programs do not appear to serve ads in proper context and are not necessarily relevant to users. Perhaps a designated area on Twitter displaying uncluttered advertisements would be a more effective way to create the most impact and revenue for Twitter/advertisers without the appearance of trying to push subliminal messages to users?

With Facebook dominating social network revenues with $700 Million in 2009 and a $1.1 Billion projected revenue for 2010, Twitter is a just a little behind the game in their advertising efforts (wink, wink). It’s completely understandable that Twitter is trying to step up their revenue model and leverage the millions of eyeballs that visit the site daily, and who can blame them? It will be interesting to see how Twitter will evolve its advertising offerings to deliver more relevant targeted messages to their users that deliver successful campaigns for their advertisers.

Do you have any thoughts on how Twitter can improve their advertising methods? What is your opinion on the topic?