Twitter Brings Sponsors To Stickers

Twitter wants you to help make, and share, advertisements. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the social network earlier this week announced that PepsiCo Inc. would be the first partner in its new promoted sticker program.Twitter users can currently add stickers to any of their photos to give them a touch of personal flair. The new promoted stickers will sit on the top of Twitter’s list of photo editing tools, meaning that stickers sponsored by Pepsi or other companies will be the first seen by users after they open the editing menu.

This is the latest advertising method rolled out by social networks. As can be seen in the PYMNTS Developer Tracker, social media websites, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, have been hungry for new ways to monetize the massive number of users that access the sites each day. The latest tracker includes news about an advertising feature introduced by Facebook that is designed to use the power of social media to drive shoppers back into brick-and-mortar shops.

According to the report, the promoted stickers will function as “visual hashtags,” allowing users to click on the stickers to see other images that use the same one. They can only be applied to photos via the Twitter Android and iOS apps but can be viewed across all mobile apps and the web.

Users in 10 different countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Russia and India will have access to the stickers.

Pepsi designed more than 50 individual images to be used as stickers, though tweeters will only have access to eight Pepsi stickers designated specifically for use in their country. Twitter users in the U.S. will be able to choose from options, including a pair of Pepsi cans, a barbecue grill and a pair of smiling emojis, among others.

Pepsi, which described the campaign as the “largest partnership between the two brands to date,” also paid for a promoted hashtag, #SayItWithPepsi, as part of the deal.The promoted stickers are not Twitter’s first attempt this year to create new revenue streams, as the company fights decreasing revenue and stagnant growth, according to WSJ. It also recently acquired streaming rights for NBA programming and the NFL’s Thursday Night Football.

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The PYMNTS.com Developer Tracker, powered by Vantiv, provides the payments ecosystem with a view into how software developers are using new technologies to create innovative business opportunities and enable merchants to optimize the ways in which they engage with shoppers today. The developer community within the tracker is separated into three categories: Shopping and Payments, Operations and Marketing.