Twitter's Mobile Ads Begin to Click,Twitter Inc. is showing early signs of success selling advertising on mobile devices, an area that is bedeviling Internet companies including Facebook Inc. FB -0.85% and Google Inc. GOOG +2.79%
On most days, Twitter is now generating the majority of its revenue from ads shown to its users on mobile gadgets, rather than from ads on Twitter.com, company executives said. One key reason: People who see a Twitter ad on their phones are more likely to click or interact with it in some way, which is how Twitter gets paid for advertisements.
he San Francisco company has only been offering mobile ads in earnest since April, and some companies buying Twitter ads said they haven't kept tabs on the effectiveness of their campaigns on mobile devices.
But P.F. Chang's China Bistro Inc. PFCB +0.02% is among the advertisers that say they were surprised at how many people are clicking on Twitter mobile ads.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based restaurant chain this winter spent $25,000 to pitch a Lunar New Year promotion to people on Twitter. P.F. Chang's arranged to push posts promoting dining rewards to Twitter users, including those searching for terms such as "Chinese New Year," on their mobile phones or their personal computers.
In the first four days of the campaign, P.F. Chang's said roughly 1 million people clicked, recirculated or otherwise interacted with the Twitter ad. Of those people, roughly 70% did so from mobile devices rather than computers.
