Twitter gaining momentum in the mobile advertising space, putting pressure on Facebook

Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) is increasing the pressure on Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) in the area of mobile app advertising. Despite being rather slow in rolling out new ad products, Twitter is gaining momentum. This is due in part to its closer integration with MoPub and comes very soon after the recent changes that Twitter has implemented to its user interface and several added features.

Last week, Twitter previewed its first mobile app ads created using its mobile app promotion suite. The mobile app promotion suite is not yet out of Beta testing but when finished, will combine Twitter Cards and Promoted Tweets to try and tempt users to either download a new app or start re-using some of the apps they already have installed. New mobile app ads are already being displayed to users from some of the partners working on the beta testing of the mobile app promotion suite including HotelTonight, Deezer and SeatGreek.

The next opportunity for Twitter is to use Mopub, the mobile ad exchange provider, to allow its advertising clients to start running simultaneous campaigns on Twitter and MoPub. This would be a huge leap forward and given that MoPub reaches over a billion separate mobile devices, would give Twitter the right to say that one of these campaigns can reach an audience of at least equivalent size to Facebook’s. Facebook is cagey about how much of its revenue comes from mobile apps, but it is thought to be a significant contributor.

Twitter has been very precise in its approach to introducing new advertising products and the result may be a more structured offering compared to Facebook’s method of offering everything then reducing the choices.