Dive Brief: 

• In an effort to beef up revenues for its upcoming IPO, Twitter is diversifying ad models. One new offering is the lead-generation cards, which appeal to B2B advertisers.  
• Lead-generation cards are an extension of promoted tweets that allow users to opt in to offers in-stream, usually for an offer or coupons, while the ad buyer collects email leads. 
• Analytics firm Webtrends has been using the lead-generation cards on a four-week trial that generated 10 times the amount of leads collected the previous quarter. The lead-generation cards performed so well, Webtrends is moving spend away from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter. 

Dive Insight: 

The key to what makes Twitter's lead-generation cards so useful is the ability to opt in in-stream rather than sending users to a landing page. Anything ads can do to reduce effort on the part of the user will increase lead generation. Expanding ad offerings to include in-stream lead generation of this type will attract more B2B advertisers who may not have seen as much value in the platform before.