Twitter introduces #keyword targeting for advertisers
Twitter has announced that it will be rolling out keyword targeting as a part of its ad platform, in a bid to allow advertisers far higher rates of engagement.
The news comes not long after Twitter upgraded its advertising interface to make it easier for advertisers to track and manage campaigns.
Through running geotargeted campaigns using keywords, advertisers will be able to target ads based on what Twitter users are saying in their tweets. For example, if a user tweeted about a music album, they may soon see a promoted tweet – created by the advertiser – alerting them to ticket sales in the area for that artist.
To set up a campaign to target keywords in the timeline, advertisers will enter the keywords they wish to target, choose whether they want to use phrase match or unordered keyword match, and then specify any other targeting options, such as geographic location and gender.
“This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent – because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context,” said Twitter’s project manager for revenue, Nipoon Malhotra.
He went on to say that user experiences aren’t expected to change, and instead will improve as a result of the feature as they see more relevant promoted tweets.
Richard Marks, Director, Research the Media has spoken of the “monetisation dilemma” for Twitter, but notes that it is likely to crack it – the only problem will be making sure it works for users, particularly younger people, and not just advertisers.
“Twitter is starting to monetise: eMarketer predicts that it will earn $1.33bn of advertising globally by 2015,” Marks said in his latest Newsline column.
“[But] the cynic in me wonders whether youngsters will in time experience exactly the same disillusionment with Twitter [as they say they now do with Facebook] when it cracks the monetisation challenge.
“Think of the online storm last Autumn when Instagram tried to change its T&C’s to claim they owned your photos. Outrageous – or an obvious route to monetising the asset?”
Thw news comes as the Financial Times reports that Twitter has just signed its biggest advertising deal yet with Publicis’ Starcom MediaVest, one of the world’s leading ad-buyers.
The deal – structured as a partnership between the two companies – is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and reflects the growing importance of Twitter in media and marketing, particularly in the TV industry.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Laura Desmond, global chief executive of Starcom MediaVest Group said: “Twitter, in a very short period of time, has gone from an experiment to something that is essential. This signals to the marketplace how we want to conduct business and measure the implications. This is the future. It’s convergence.”