More powerful tools for small business and self-service advertisers

Monday, 18 March 2013

When we created our self-service platform for Twitter Ads, we focused on crafting an experience that would be powerful but also insanely simple for any business to use, from your local bakery to larger enterprises using multiple marketing channels. It’s been available by invitation only in the United States since last March, and already thousands of businesses are seeing encouraging results.

As we listened to feedback, two requests kept coming up: marketers wanted access to more robust targeting tools, as well as a pathway to all the bells and whistles of our advanced interface if they desired it.

Today we’re happy to announce that both features are going live.

New targeting options

Our self-service advertisers can now target interests in two specific ways. First, they can target users with the same interests as followers of @usernames. For example, if a golf pro shop were promoting itself, it might target users who are similar to those who follow @GolfDigestMag, @GolfChannel or even a former professional golfer like Annika Sorenstam (@ANNIKA59).

More powerful tools for small business and self-service advertisers

They can also choose from a wide-ranging list of over 350 interest categories—from auto racing to birdwatching (or in this case, golf). By targeting people’s interests, advertisers can tailor their messages to reach those most likely to engage with them.

In addition to these interest targeting options, self-service advertisers can now specify the exact devices and platforms to have Promoted Tweets display. This means a game developer can choose to target Android devices with campaigns to download Android-specific apps with their campaign, and Apple devices to drive them to the App Store. We’ve also added the ability to target by gender (which we extrapolate using public user signals) for situations where marketers want to reach specifically men or women.

More powerful tools for small business and self-service advertisers

Access to our advanced interface

Self-service advertisers who are more experienced with online advertising can now choose to use our advanced interface’s deeper campaign controls, detailed reporting and analytics, and multi-campaign optimization, which help them run more complex campaigns and optimize in real time. The pricing remains the same, and you can start and stop campaigns at any time in both interfaces.

New advertisers can switch to the advanced interface by signing in to ads.twitter.com, setting up their first advertising campaign, entering their billing information, and selecting the option to switch to the advanced interface. Existing advertisers will find a new link titled “Switch to Advanced” at the top of their dashboard once logging in.

Our self-service advertising platform is only available by invitation to U.S.-based businesses right now, with international expansion to start later this year. If you’d like to become an advertiser, please visit our self-service site on business.twitter.com. We’re excited to see how you use these new capabilities.

Posted by
Ravi Narasimhan (@ravi)
Product Manager, Revenue