New Twitter ad targeting options are finally here. Within the last few weeks, Twitter has launched two new forms of ad targeting for its Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products — enhanced geo-targeting and interest-based targeting.
Twitter’s interest targeting enables advertisers to use 350 targeting criteria categories or create custom segments based on Twitter account @usernames. For example, if you want to target by education, income, hobbies, or pets, you can now do it. If you want to target a specific Twitter user and all of his followers, you can do that, too. With over 140 million active monthly users on Twitter, these new ad targeting features are getting a great deal of attention from brand marketers.
The enhanced geo-targeting capabilities allow advertisers to target Twitter users in new areas of the United Kingdom and Japan in addition to the countries and U.S. cities that have been part of Twitter targeting since earlier this year.
The announcements of new targeting options in Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products are great news for brands that want to connect with the highly engaged Twitter user audience. Twitter has already reported that brands involved in the ad targeting beta program are seeing significantly increased audience reach and high engagement rates thanks to the Twitter interest-based and location-based targeting options.
Twitter is quick to point out that monetization is a business need but won’t over-run the site and user experience that people expect from the Twitter brand. Kevin Dewell, Director of Project Management for Twitter, explained in a post on the Twitter blog, “We’ve always taken a thoughtful approach to monetization, and early results show interest targeting creates a better experience for marketers and users.”
As long as brands see strong engagement and conversion rates and Twitter’s audience finds the ads unobtrusive, Twitter advertising should continue to grow and improve. What do you think of Twitter advertising for brands and the new targeting options being offered? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: Sanja Gjenero
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
