Twitter Airs Its First TV Commercial, Promotes Its First Hashtag Page

Twitter aired its first TV commercial during Sunday’s Poconoa 400 NASCAR race that aired on the U.S. cable network TNT.

The 15-second spot is part of Twitter’s recently announced deal with NASCAR that saw the racing organization buying a new ad product called a “hashtag page.”

Update, June 22: We got this part of the story wrong. As Twitter has confirmed in this new article, Twitter’s Second Hashtag Page Promotes Euro 2012, Continues Twitter’s Move Into Media, hashtag pages are not a paid product. We apologize for the error.

During race weekend, fans could visit twitter.com/#NASCAR to get the latest tweets from drivers, other race team members and journalists tweeting about the race. Twitter says content for the page was selected both algorithmically and by human curation.

Twitter’s first TV ad showed, in essence, where some of the content for that hashtag page was coming from — the drivers. Brad Keselowski is shown sitting in his car taking a photo with his iPhone with the text, “See what he sees.”

Twitter eventually aired six more NASCAR-themed commercials and uploaded the entire group to YouTube.

The ads only ran during yesterday’s race coverage on TNT and a Twitter spokesperson says the company has “no future plans to confirm at this time” regarding additional TV advertising. Twitter says that the NASCAR hashtag page will remain online for future races.

There’s no comparison between the Pocono 400 and the Super Bowl, but it’s worth noting that Google also chose a sports event for its first TV commercial. It’s also worth noting that several members of Twitter’s communications team are former Google employees.

(tip via Business Insider)