Twitter follows Facebook in selling ads that push mobile app installs

Soon you’ll be one tap away from downloading an app on Twitter.

The company today announced a new mobile app promotion suite, which seems very similar to Facebook’s own app promotion offering. The new suite will allow advertisers to promote their apps directly on Twitter users’ streams, as well as reach consumers outside of Twitter via MoPub’s mobile ad exchange.

Today’s news makes it clear why Twitter shelled out $350 million in stock for MoPub last year. It now has an ad reach that spans the 241 million active users on Twitter as well as the more than 1 billion unique devices in MoPub’s network. Advertisers will be able to manage their campaigns entirely from Twitter’s ad dashboard.

Facebook launched its mobile app ad product in late 2012, so Twitter is coming at this a bit late. It makes sense for both companies to focus directly on promoting app installs — it’s far more useful than promoting a link that leads to an app store, potentially losing a potential consumer in the process. Marketers are willing to pay what it takes to remove the friction of app installs.

Twitter product manager Kelton Lynn describes the new app promotion suite as an ad unit that combines the best of Twitter’s Cards (which bring multimedia content into the Twitter stream) and its Promoted Tweets ad units. The new suite is currently available to U.S. advertisers in private beta.

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Early beta partners in the promoted app program include Seatgeek, GREE, and GetTaxi.

“This is the first of many opportunities to join Twitter and MoPub to create a large-scale, rich, and well-targeted advertising platform — one that provides high ROI for marketers and a great experience for users,” Lynn wrote.