Twitter did big things for their advertising name when they released Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts, allowing for Twitter to effectively be used for marketing purposes. As any company that is new in advertising will do, Twitter has announced some new improvements to their marketing opportunities. Twitter has announced that they will now be allowing marketers to target Twitter users based on interest with their Promoted Tweets and Accounts. In addition to this new opportunity for Twitter marketers, the company has lowered the minimum bid for their ad bidding system to one cent, making their advertising prices pretty attractive. Twitter seems to be making all the right moves that will bring them a decent reputation with advertisers.
Today we’re taking an important next step by allowing you to target your Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts campaigns to a set of interests that you explicitly choose. By targeting people’s topical interests, you will be able to connect with a greater number of users and deliver tailored messages to people who are more likely to engage with your Tweets. When people discover offers and messages about the things they care about on Twitter, it’s good for both marketers and users.
With their new interest-based targeting feature, Twitter is offering up two options to marketers. The first option allows marketers to choose from upwards of 350 interest categories, and target users based on those that they choose. These categories include things like Movies, Music, Pets, Science, Society, Law, Style and Fashion, and many more. After choosing an interest category, marketers can choose specific interests based on them, like sub-interests. Twitter calls it a two-level hierarchy, and it contains hundreds of interest options.
There are those marketers that are looking to target more precise user groups, which is where the second option comes into play. This option allows marketers to, “create custom segments by specifying certain @usernames that are relevant to the product, event or initiative you are looking to promote. Custom segments let you reach users with similar interests to that @username’s followers.” This will allow marketers to reach even further than to those that follow them and reach users with the same interests.
Twitter has already been testing this new feature for a while, and they reported that many have seen significant increases in their audience reach. There have also been beta testers that were able to make good use of the option to specify user groups and target them specifically. In both scenarios, there have been high engagement rates in the targeted Promoted Tweets and Accounts.
In light of their new and improved marketing opportunities, Twitter has lowered the minimum bid on their ads, knowing that they will be receiving many more bids on these ads.
Great content matters: if you have engaging Promoted Tweet copy, you can win even if others bid higher. We believe the new lower minimum bid, in combination with interest targeting, will drive greater ROI for every campaign on Twitter.
The announcement was made by Kevin Well, Director of Product Management.
