According to Twitter, over 500 million people look at Twitter without logging in, so to better monetize these “users,” it’s going to start showing them ads. At least some of them.

AdAge reports that the company is testing showing ads to some logged out users on the desktop. This includes users coming from Google. From the report:

For example, now when someone who’s not logged in to Twitter clicks on a tweet appearing in Google’s search results, Twitter will be able to show an ad to that person and make some money. Twitter will not be sharing any of the revenue from that Google-driven traffic with Google, a Twitter spokesman confirmed.

This is only a test and will be limited to logged-out visitors in the U.S., U.K., Japan and Australia for now, though Twitter expects to eventually extend the ads to other countries as well as its mobile properties.

As you may know, Google and Twitter entered a partnership earlier this year, which sees Twitter getting better treatment in search results. For Twitter it was a way to drive more traffic to tweets. With the inclusion of these ads, that traffic should be better monetized.

According to the company, the majority of its logged-out users are visiting on desktop rather than mobile devices.

The ads will reportedly appear when visitors look at a Twitter user’s profile or a tweet-specific page. Eventually, it will also show ads on the logged-out homepage.

Image via Wikimedia Commons