Have you seen any promoted tweets recently that were eerily relevant to you? After launching a small ad experiment in July, Twitter has announced that its “tailored audiences” (aka targeted ads) program is now available to all marketers. This means any brand can now push ads to you based on your browsing history.
How Tailored Audiences Work
Brands can create unique audiences to target their ads to. Then, through its advertising partners Adara, AdRoll, BlueKai, Chango, DataXu, Dstillery, Lotame, Quantcast, ValueClick and [x+1], Twitter identifies users that fit a brand’s audience criteria based on the websites they’ve visited. For example, if you begin shopping for a car online, later you might see car-related promoted tweets appear in your timeline. The ad could offer you a discount (which can be fantastic) or might just encourage you to visit a dealer’s website.
Twitter explains the tailored audiences approach in this diagram:
Undoubtedly, after its IPO Twitter feels a burning need to monetize its services. Anyway Twitter can please advertisers is therefore a way to please stockholders. “We’re excited about the possibilities that tailored audiences will open up for marketers with direct response objectives,” wrote Product Manager Abhishek Shrivastava. Twitter reports that brands who’ve tested tailored audiences have seen positive results. After targeting recent visitors to its site, HubSpot saw an increase of 45% in engagement rate. Krossover, which analyzes game video for sports coaches, used tailored audiences to decrease cost per customer acquisition by 74%.
Tailored Audiences and Privacy Concerns
As much as Twitter would like to increase ad revenue by sending targeted ads to everyone, Twitter allows users to unsubscribe from tailored audiences. To do so, visit your privacy settings on Twitter and uncheck the box next to “Promoted content.” From then on Twitter will no longer match your account to information shared by its ad partners. Additionally, in line with Do Not Track (DNT), Twitter will not receive browser-related information from any user with DNT enabled in their browser.
What do you think of tailored audiences on Twitter?
