Twitter is taking a big step to improve its monetization strategies by making its ads more effective. The company said it is launching a new product for advertisers, the "Tailored Audiences," which will help companies reach out to potential customers who have already showed interest in their brand outside of Twitter.
Tailored Audiences ensures that the ads that consumers see on Twitter are the things that they are actually interested in. If you visited a finance-related website, for example, Twitter can retarget you with relevant tweets that you will likely check out. It works this way: once you visit the website, it could share browsers cookie IDs with Twitter through an ads partner. Twitter then determines if you have an account and, if yes, it will target you with a tweet about the website. The end result will be Twitter users finding relevant and useful promoted tweets. The system works even for mobile users.
Twitter started to test the program in July and says the trials proved it effective. Several beta testers showed a boost in engagement and reduction in the cost of customer acquisition. Krossover, a sports technology company, experienced a 74 percent reduction in its cost of customer acquisition while inbound marketing software platform Hubspot saw a 45 percent boost in engagement with retargeted ads.
The rollout of the program is Twitter’s effort to provide value to marketers and more importantly, boost its ad revenue. The company is facing pressure to turn profits following its IPO last month, but while relevant ads can lead to better revenues for Twitter, it also raises privacy concerns for some individuals. Twitter, however, offers its users an option to opt out of retargeting through its security and privacy settings page. The company also says that it honors Do Not Track for users that have expressed their preference not to be tracked by websites.
Tailored Audiences is available to advertisers worldwide but instead of offering retargeted ads directly to advertisers, Twitter says interested brands should work with any of their partners that include Adara, AdRoll, BlueKai, Chango, DataXu, Dstillery, Lotame, Quantcast, ValueClick, and [x+1].
