Airtel Digital TV, an arm of Indian telecommunications company Bharti Airtel, revealed Monday that it has integrated Twitter with its digital TV offerings for the first time. With this new form of convergence, users can actually tweet while watching TV and can view tweets related to their TV shows as well. It launches Tuesday at no extra charge to subscribers.

Jana Messerschmidt, Twitter’s VP of business development and platforms, said, “We are excited to see partners like Airtel innovating with our platform and helping their audience connect with the TV programs they love.”

Airtel’s Twitter know-how actually comes from Bangalore-based startup Brizz TV, which works in the areas of TV technology and is powering this new service for Airtel Digital TV. To start watching-and-tweeting, subscribers just have to click their remote’s green button. Initially, the service will be available on select TV channels, but more will be added.

Airtel Digital TV has 373 channels including 17 high definition and five interactive channels. It claimed to have 8.5 million subscribers at the end of June 2013.

Although Airtel hasn’t disclosed the business model of this partnership with Twitter, it’s fairly safe to assume that the telco will stream targeted Twitter ads and marketing promotions to its TV subscribers. Airtel could also use this to better promote its other Internet services. Since the voice and SMS business is no longer the prime revenue generator in India, it is forcing telcos to innovate and develop new ways to get income.

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Image: Scott Beale

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The ads will be sold via Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, its real-time bidding system. In a few months, marketers will be able to buy ads for Facebook’s Ad Exchange on the platform.

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“Partnership has been key to Google’s success as a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’re excited to announce a new way to help our clients succeed by working with Facebook to participate in FBX, their real-time bidding exchange,” Payam Shodjai, Senior Product Manager at Google, wrote in a post.

Facebook introduced FBX last year. The program lets advertisers drop cookies in users browsers and then retarget those users when the re-enter Facebook.

Though Facebook and Google compete on many levels, their partnership isn’t unprecedented. In June 2012, Google bought Wildfire, a social media marketing agencies that develops ad campaigns for Facebook, among others. Facebook this year also purchased Atlas, an ad server that sells ads on Google’s display network.

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