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(Image Source: Twitter)
BY SHANLEY REYNOLDS
ANCHOR CANDICE AVILES
Twitter
has announced a plan to make its advertising services, like promoted tweets, available
to companies in the Middle East and North African.
During an event in Dubai, Sunday,
Twitter also announced they would be partnering with a Middle Eastern company called Connect
Ads.
Twitter’s VP of International Operations said: “This partnership is in
line with our strategy which is now focused on building out our international presence.”
Reuters
says the timing of the venture has a lot to do with how much the social media site was
used during the Arab Spring of 2012.
Which correlates with what Twitter claims: the number
of users in the Middle Eastern and North African regions has tripled in the last 12 months.
And
although Twitter does not break down its users by region, The Dubai Chronicle estimates there
are between 20,000 and 50,000 users in the region.
But a writer for Business
2 Community says Twitter Advertising isn’t up to snuff to what businesses are offered
through other social media advertising, saying it’s very generic and doesn’t allow for
much control.
“Word on the street is that the bigger brands have access to a much
more robust ad platform and I certainly hope they open this up to us smaller folks. In
the meantime, I don’t see any value in continuing use of the platform until they do.”
The
advertising products that will be launched in the region include promoted tweets, accounts
and trends.