July 6, 2015 - 18:20 AMT
Twitter rolling out new ad button in mobile apps

Twitter’s latest push to monetize its service has led to the rollout of a new “Twitter Ads” button, which is now prominently appearing on user profile pages on both the iOS and Android client applications, TechCrunch reports.

The newly added button, which some users may have initially mistaken as a shortcut to Twitter analytics, is found right next to the “Edit profile” button, the account switcher and the Settings icon. By clicking on the Ads button, users are offered the ability to manage their Twitter ad campaigns while on the go.

Not everyone is happy with the change, which some Twitter users are calling “desperate,” or “ugly.” And it’s hard to find fault with those sentiments. If you’re not currently running a Twitter ad campaign, the feature does nothing more than let you know that this button serves as a place where you can manage an ad campaign in the future – it doesn’t go so far as to allow users to actually get started building their first campaign from the app itself, TechCrunch says.

That’s a different tactic–and perhaps a more overzealous one–than the one Facebook took when it introduced a way to manage Facebook ads via smartphones earlier this year, TechCrunch says. The company launched a dedicated Facebook Ads Manager App which not only allowed current advertisers to track the way their ad campaigns were performing, but actually brought the creation process itself to mobile phones. Here, users could write ad text, upload photos, and even target their desired audience right from the app itself.

It’s unclear at this time what portion of the Twitter user base is seeing the new Ads button, as Twitter has not officially announced the addition. However, both the iOS and Android app were recently updated on their respective app stores. The feature is now supposedly being tested in beta.