Twitter is testing out ads in replies because ads every five tweets wasn’t enough

Twitter has been on a new feature kick lately, with most of them being welcome changes. That run ends now, with Twitter testing a new place for targeted advertising – in the middle of your replies.

Yes, it’s not enough that you get “Promoted” tweets and advertising while you’re scrolling through your feed. Those seem to pop up frequently enough, but this new placement is going to be even more visible.

The new advertising placement is testing on both Android and iOS right now, so you can probably side-step it if you use a desktop browser or even a mobile browser.

If you’re using the apps though, you might start seeing ads after the “first, third, or eighth reply to a tweet if you’re in the test,” according to Twitter’s revenue product lead, Bruce Falck.

Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Twitter reply chains are already a cesspool, with warnings about spicy conversations, reply guys, and crypto-scammers pretending to be Elon Musk. Adding advertising and sponsored tweets into the mix is just going to make it even more difficult to decide if you’re talking to a real person or a bot.

Maybe this will start an exodus to TweetDeck, which doesn’t seem to show advertising but is kinda a mess on mobile. Then again, Twitter hasn’t really done anything to improve TweetDeck since they bought it all those years ago.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.