App Ads Are Huge for Facebook. Here Comes Twitter's Version.

Dick Costolo is getting ready to take one of the most valuable pages from Mark Zuckerberg’s playbook.

Twitter is preparing to launch a new ad product that lets users click a button and head straight to Apple or Google’s app store, where they can download the app that paid for the ad.

“App install” ads, fueled by game developers like Candy Crush maker King, have been enormously lucrative for Facebook. Some industry observers believe app ads may account for half, or even more, of Facebook’s mobile ad revenue. That would mean app ads generated more than a billion dollars for Facebook in the last quarter of 2013 alone.

Twitter has been testing its own app ads for months. Now the company is a few weeks away from a formal launch, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.

Some of you may have already seen app ads in your stream. Here’s one spotted by Owen Thomas, ReadWrite’s editor-in-chief, this morning.

Saw my first Twitter app-download ad, from @Square. pic.twitter.com/dzOfI9vO3w

— Owen Thomas (@owenthomas) April 4, 2014

Twitter is already quite familiar with the app ad market. MoPub, the mobile ad tech company Twitter purchased last fall, moves lots of app install ads via its exchange.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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