While some people thought that perhaps twitter would make a partnership with Google or Bing, it turns out that they have decided to start their own program, opting to compete with Google. This comes almost a year after they denied that this was something they would ever do, instead trying to promote that Twitter was a forum for brand advertising. Twitter ad sales chief Adam Bain infact confirmed the existence of the program. Despite denials, pretty much the entire industry was sure this would have to eventually happen for Twitter to compete in the marketplace.

Similar to Google, this will allow anyone to place advertisements on Twitter using a credit card to buy directly, and in theory allow affiliates and performance marketers to change their advertisement on the fly.

 These advertisers can now set up and run their own Promoted Products campaigns and pay via a credit card. This is an important step in continuing to grow Twitter’s business. Our Promoted Products can help small and medium-sized businesses build their audience on Twitter and better engage with the people they want to reach. As with all of our advertising efforts, we’re starting small, testing carefully and making improvements as we learn what works. We will slowly roll this capability out to more advertisers in the coming weeks and months.

Mashable’s Todd Wasserman mentioned of the ads:

Twitter has indeed been taking its time with the initiative. A year ago, the company rolled out a turn-key advertising solution that lets marketers express their interest in advertising. However, such potential advertisers were not able to actually buy ads until last month.

This is great news, as more and more people have been complaining that having twitter fans in itself wasn’t at all effective.

According to research firm eMarketer, Twitter’s will be around a total of  $139.5 million in 2011 and reach $260 million in 2012. This is only of course, if Twitter survives 2012.

There is no word when the platform will be open to the general public.

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