Following three years of partner testing, Twitter has announced the general availability of its advertising services for U.S. businesses. Kevin Weil, Twitter’s senior director of product for revenue, made the announcement on stage yesterday during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City. The launch of Twitter Ad services could increase company revenue in preparation for an anticipated IPO.

“Twitter first announced in April 2010 that it would begin showing ads,” reports TechCrunch. “Since then it’s revealed Promoted Tweets and Promoted accounts, which let businesses pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. More recently, Twitter announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an Ads API for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February 2013.”

Last week, the microblogger announced that advertisements could be targeted based on keywords that appear in tweets, providing similar functionality to Google Search ads.

“Today we’re taking the next step and opening up Twitter ads to everyone in the U.S. Every brand, every business, every account, every individual,” explained Weil on stage. “Businesses have been on Twitter since day one and we’re really excited that today every business in the U.S. is going to be able to leverage the power of Twitter advertising, either through Promoted Accounts to build a loyal follower-base, or through Promoted Tweets to reach a broader audience.”

“The ads rollout means the microblogging platform can start more seriously competing with other social outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn for ad dollars,” notes the article. “Some expect Twitter to hit $950 million in revenue in 2014, largely from ads. That could be enough to lure advertisers to invest in the company if it in fact IPOs. Getting its ad business humming on mobile before announcing any move to go public could let Twitter avoid the bashing Facebook’s share price received when it IPO’d.”

The TechCrunch post includes a 25-minute video of Weil’s appearance at Disrupt. For more information, visit the Twitter for Business page.