Twitter added stickers around six weeks ago in an effort to encourage users to share more pictures on the social network, as well as hopefully attracting new users and jump-starting its stalled growth. Now, the company is transforming the feature into a marketing opportunity by introducing Promoted Stickers.

Brands will be able to create and promote customer stickers available for all Twitter users to add to photos, designing either four or eight images per campaign that can be added as accessories or props into users pictures.

Like non-promoted stickers, adding these props to photos will also transfer them into searchable items, similar to the way a hashtag can be added to a text post, enabling brands to easily track how their stickers are being used.

Pepsi are the first company to take advantage of the new marketing channel, acting as exclusive launch partner and sharing nearly 50 customer stickers across 10 markets for their global PepsiMoji campaign. The partnership will also include a branded Pepsi emoji on Twitter, and a promoted trending topic.

“We are always looking to provide fun ways for people to express themselves on Twitter,” said Ilya Brown, head of product, brand and video ads at Twitter. “And as a brand, creative expression tools like GIFs, polls and emojis help you drive deeper customer engagement. Promoted Stickers represents a huge opportunity for brands to drive brand affinity and raise awareness of their message at scale.”

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