It now costs companies $1,000 a month to advertise on Twitter

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If they want to do it properly, at least.

Elon Musk in front of the Twitter logo
(Image credit: Future)

Just a day after Twitter started to finally remove the legacy blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don't pay for Twitter Blue, things have gotten even stranger. Now, Twitter says that advertisers must be verified if they want to run ads on the social network.

The move means that businesses running ads will effectively have to pay $1,000 per month if they want to be able to advertise on Twitter, although they could potentially pay the base $8 per month and pretend they're an individual. That would mean missing out on the other features that verified organizations benefit from, however.

In an email to advertisers, Twitter did also note that businesses already spending more than $1,000 per month will automatically get a free gold checkmark applied to their account if they haven't got it already.

Verification at a cost

The news was shared as people posted screenshots of an email outlining the plans on their Twitter accounts. Social media analyst Matt Navarra was one of the first to do so, noting that accounts need to be either Twitter Blue-verified or a verified organization to continue running ads.

This being Twitter, there is of course plenty of confusion. Can businesses actually pay the $8 per month for a normal blue checkmark, for example? The email appears to suggest so, but it will be interesting to see how many go that route and if they do, whether Twitter will take any action against them.

Twitter and owner Elon Musk clearly want businesses to pay $1,000 a month or more, so the prospect of them choosing to pay $8 instead is unlikely to go down all that well.

The theory behind Twitter's move might not be all that bad, however. Having accounts be verified before they can run ads could potentially prevent the spreading of false information or scams, but only if its verification process actually verified identities. Otherwise, anyone with a credit card would have access to Twitter's ad platform regardless.

Avoiding scams on Twitter has become increasingly difficult since Musk's $44 billion buyout in late 2020. All we'll say is this — if someone is advertising Apple's best iPhone at a price that seems too good to be true, it probably is. 

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Just_Me_D
    That’s great! It cost me a good deal of stress trying to play a game on my iPhone in between the ads that pop up too frequently and then make the “x” that would return me to the game I was playing barely visible. Great job Elon. Make ‘‘em pay.
    Reply
  • Ledsteplin
    Just_Me_D said:
    That’s great! It cost me a good deal of stress trying to play a game on my iPhone in between the ads that pop up too frequently and then make the “x” that would return me to the game I was playing barely visible. Great job Elon. Make ‘‘em pay.

    Reply