Twitter Bans Third Party In-Stream Ads

Whether or not you hate in-stream ads, Twitter is banning many of them. Twitter announced today that plans to edit its terms of service for developers and will prohibit third-party advertising networks and developers from inserting ads into a user’s stream.

This will severely affect several companies that created their business around in-stream ads (including Ad.ly, 140 Proof, and the newly launched Tweetup)

So what’s their reasoning? They say they want to value the user experience:

Why are we prohibiting these kinds of ads? First, third party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created. They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform. For example, a third party ad network may seek to maximize ad impressions and click through rates even if it leads to a net decrease in Twitter use due to user dissatisfaction.

Secondly, the basis for building a lasting advertising network that benefits users should be innovation, not near-term monetization. Twitter is uniquely dependent on and responsible for the long-term health and value of the platform. Accordingly, a necessary focus of Promoted Tweets is to explore ways to create value for our users. Third party ad networks may be optimized for near-term monetization at the expense of innovating or creating the best user experience. We believe it is our responsibility to encourage creative product development and to curb practices that compromise innovation.

Companies can continue to place ads in their application as long as it’s not in the stream … not that it will help those who created their revenue generation model based on placing ads in-stream.

And users can continue to input their own ads in-stream. Check out these Ways to make money with Twitter ads for a list of companies that should be in business … until Twitter makes more changes.