Twitter has been rolling out ad-targeting innovations since its IPO in November. The social media giant announced on its blog on Wednesday the launch of broad match for keywords. This feature broadens the scope of advertisers’ target audiences – within Twitter’s 230 million users – by expanding keyword searches.
Broad match allows advertisers to locate potential customers by identifying Twitter users that use keyword related words in their tweets, including spelling variations, synonyms, and slang. In that way, advertisers can identify potential customers who either “love” or “luv” Cancún, for example, or even “adore Cancoon.” Broad match is set to be the default for keyword targeting from here on.
Twitter began experimenting with ad re-targeting in July and announced last week the global release of “tailored audiences.” This re-targeting product identifies potential and current customers through cookies that reveal which Twitter users recently visited a brand’s website. Brand advertisers share cookie IDs with Twitter through advertising partners. This allows brands to promote offers specifically to Twitter users who have shown recent interest.
The way this works is that a Twitter user who recently researched flight information, for example, receives a promoted tweet from the airline with a relevant offer. Delta Airlines and their agency partner Digitas, according to Twitter’s December 5th blog post, were involved in the beta testing of the product.
Digitas media planner Breanne Loso commented: “We were pleased with the campaign’s initial performance and excited about the opportunities that the tailored audiences feature represents moving into 2014. The ability to hone in on a very specific audience segment, such as recent flight searchers or recent flight bookers, and continue a conversation with them while on the go and within the social space is a fairly unique and powerful offering.” Another beta tester company saw an increase in conversion rates of 195%.
Tailored audiences and broad match for keyword targeting offers marketers a highly effective means to point content at well-defined audiences. The justified optimism of advertisers has resulted in a big spike in Twitter shares, up 9.3% on the NYSE on December the 8th. Nevertheless, Bloomberg analysts predict that Twitter still won’t turn a profit until 2016.
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