Twitter to Roll Out Ad Products to 50 Countries

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LONDON - Twitter has unveiled an aggressive expansion of its advertising products, with a rollout planned to 50 countries by the end of the year, according to the Guardian.

The expansion marks the next stage for the six-year-old tech startup's development, with Twitter seeking to turn its 140 million users into revenue.

Asked about the next stage of development for the company, founder Jack Dorsey left the door open for a flotation, or potentially a sale to a technology giant such as Google.

"I'm extremely humbled by how quick and broadly Twitter has taken off an how we've done building something independent and timeless? This is a company that will last," he said, speaking at a press conference at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity on Thursday morning.

"The company has always put itself in a position to choose when it is ready [to make strategic decisions such as an IPO or sale]. We do things when we are ready. We have a good understanding about pacing and have the discipline to make the [right] choices ourselves."

Twitter, which currently offers its advertising products in just a handful of countries, intends to roll out them out to 50 territories by the end of the year with certain markets the top of the list. Latin America, particularly Brazil, and west European countries such as Spain and Germany will be the first to get Twitter's three advertising products promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts.

"There is a ton of demand but we don't have dates as yet," said the Twitter chief executive, Dick Costolo, who refused to comment on the company's financial position or targets. "That is one of the great things of being private, I don't have to discuss these things," he said.

Twitter provided some interesting insights about its usage, including that 60 percent of users access via mobile 80 percent in the U.K., and that there was no sign of a slowdown in growth rates, a problem that is starting to weigh on the other big social media company, Facebook.

"Growth is still broad-based and global," said Costolo. "We are still growing quite fast month on month in the U.K., Mexico, Spain, Italy, France. Saudi Arabia is our fastest-growing market percentage-wise month on month."

The company said it is not struggling with the shift to portable devices, which Facebook is finding a problem.

"We were born mobile," said the Twitter director of revenue, Adam Bain. "Tweets are like water, they work whatever you put them through."

Costolo added that the company launched ads on mobile a few months ago and that it is "growing delightfully well". "We have had days when mobile revenue has exceeded non-mobile revenue," he added.