Twitter is testing an advertising subscription service that automatically promotes advertisers' tweets and profiles for $99 per month.
The service, if successful, could provide Twitter with a source of recurring revenue it can count on each month.
Twitter could certainly use the money. Even though the company beat analyst expectations for revenue and profitability in its second-quarter earnings filing on Thursday, Wall Street was still not satisfied with its performance and dropped its stock 14%.
The subscription program is geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, for whom the process of building out ad campaigns can be daunting. Twitter spoke directly to this audience in the copy on the program's landing page:
"We’ve developed a way for you to grow your following and have your Tweets reach more people without creating ads or managing campaigns," it said.
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the test in a message to BuzzFeed News Friday morning.
While running a manual ad Twitter campaign would give advertisers more control over where their ads appear, choosing the automated option won't necessarily lead to a change in exposure per dollar spent, according to a Twitter spokesperson.
Tweets promoted with this product will be labeled like any other promoted tweet on the platform. Twitter will provide advertisers with a "report card" each week, letting them know how many followers their $99 helped them accrue, along with some other stats.