Friday, July 2, 2010
Ad.ly Expands To Twitter Apps
Looking to reduce its dependence on Twitter's fickle advertising policy, Los Angeles-based Ad.ly, the Twitter advertising startup backed by Greycroft Partners and GRP Partners, said earlier this week that it has extended its platform to applications and websites. Ad.ly said it has launched a new platform called Ad.ly for Apps, which allows applications and websites to use and API to pull up targeted, in-stream apps adjacent to a streams from sources like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. The shift puts the firm closer to the model of competing Twitter ad startup TweetUp, which is also based in Southern California, which puts ads on third party Twitter apps and web sites, instead of on Twitter's own stream.
Ad.ly's original model--brokering advertising for in-stream ads on Twitter users--was called into question at the end of May, when Twitter said it would not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into the service using its APIs. Although Ad.ly said at that the time that it conformed to all of Twitter's terms of service, the firm appeared to be in conflict with Twitter's new policy. The new, Ad.ly for Apps API looks to avoid those issues, making it more dependent on the willingness of third party applications and websites to adopt its targeted advertising service.