Twitter Interest Based Targeting
By Brook Minto, Mindshare
Background:Until now Twitter has allowed advertisers to target users through Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets, reaching those who are not followers of the brand, but who are deemed similar, in order to broaden reach. Twitter says these techniques result in a 1-3% average engagement rate for campaigns. Now, for the first time Twitter is casting the net even further by allowing brands to target the Twitter sphere based on users’ interests.
Details:
Importantly, Twitter is not offering targeting based on the content of posts themselves, but based on the keywords of what users RT and what @usernames they follow. Twitter is offering two types of interest targeting. For broader reach, you can target more than 350 interest categories, ranging from Education to Home and Garden to Investing to Soccer. As an example, if you were promoting a new animated film about dogs, you could select Animation (under Movies and Television), Cartoons (under Hobbies and Interests), and Dogs (under Pets). If you want to target more precise sets of users, you can 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; they do not let you specifically target the followers of that @username. For example, if you’re promoting your indie band’s next tour, you can create a custom audience by adding @usernames of related bands, thus targeting users with the same taste in music. In addition Twitter is lowering the minimum bid to one cent for all auctions (Promoted Products are auction-based, with winners determined by a combination of engagement rate and bids). This means if you have engaging Promoted Tweet copy, you can win even if others bid higher.
Implications:
Twitter says that in trials with a select group of beta advertisers many have seen significantly increased audience reach, whilst others have creatively defined custom audiences to reach a very specific set of users. However, twitter says all are seeing high engagement rates because they are reaching users who are interested in their content.
Summary:
This new way to target within Twitter will replace keyword targeting by September 30th. Twitter is hoping the creation of 350+ ‘interest categories’ will pave the way for better performing Ads by being able to target users who have shown an interest within that specific category or categories. This will allow brands to drive several messages to a richer, more diverse audience and ultimately understand potential follower’s passion points. Twitter also seems to be taking the advertiser’s concerns about driving deeper engagement while understanding the delivery of ROI within the bidding process more seriously, lowering the minimum bid to £0.01 in response to this. Ultimately this is a positive move that will allow for a more intelligent way of advertising - allowing brands to understand what the potential audience is engaged with, and utilize a better degree of optimization within campaigns.
Useful Links: 1.
ads.twitter.com 2.
http://advertising.twitter.com/2012/08/interest-targeting-broaden-your-reach.html