Promoted tweets and promoted trends are two ways of advertising on Twitter. Big advertisers such as Sony, Starbucks, Disney and Nike have been using them but are they working? Nobody really knows as there have been no results issued and this article on Clickz conjectures how well they are doing.

Promoted Tweets are the original Twitter ad format, having beenintroduced in April. They appear in Twitter search results, targeted to keywords. For instance, in Starbucks' recent campaign, search queries for "Starbucks" and "coffee" produced a brand appearance at the very top of the results.

Promoted Trends, meanwhile, came into play last month and entail an all-day listing at the bottom of a list of worldwide trending topics oneach user's Twitter homepage. Clicking through the Promoted Trend buttons takes a user to a search results page with the brand's tweet at the top. Links to landing pages are typically incorporated in the tweet. For instance, Disney linked to a Fandango.com tickets page with a discount code while pushing "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" on the micro-blogging site.