Twitter will spend$1 million on November 24 in support of small business owners. The micro-blogging network announced on Tuesday that the massive donation would provide business owners with free ad credits,.
Twitter will hand over the $1 million prize to 10,000 small business owners for a total of $100 in free advertising per business.
To qualify for this unique program, Twitter requires the small businesses to be located in the United States, be active on Twitter, and be new to the Twitter advertising program.
How the money is used will ultimately be left up to business owners who can purchase Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.
The social network has been pushing hard to bring small businesses on-board for its advertising platform. In February, Twitter teamed with American Express in an attempt to promote small businesses on its platform.
As hyper-targeted geo-based advertising becomes more common place, the need for Twitter to attract small businesses and then to target their locations will be of greater importance for the platform.
Speaking of its current and past programs, a Twitter employee says “thousands of U.S. business owners” have tried Twitter advertising, and the company hopes thousands more will now give the social network platform a closer look thanks to the networks Small Business Saturday support.
If you are unfamiliar with Small Business Saturday, it is a program started in 2010 that is meant to draw in shoppers to small independently owned businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
Twitter advertising comes at a steep cost for many businesses. The biggest challenge will likely be proving to business owners that the high cost of customer acquisition is worth further advertising in the future.