More relevant ads with tailored audiences

Thursday, 5 December 2013

In July we previewed a way to tailor ads for users and a way to drive better performance for our advertisers. After testing this for several months, today we are announcing the global availability of tailored audiences—a new way for advertisers to define your own groups of existing and potential customers, and connect with them on Twitter with relevant messages.

How does this work?

With tailored audiences you can reach users on Twitter who have shown interest in your brand or your category even away from Twitter. Let’s say a hotel brand wants to advertise a promotion on Twitter and they’d prefer to show their ad to travel enthusiasts who have recently visited their website. To get the special offer to those people who are also on Twitter, the hotel brand may share with us browser-related information (browser cookie ID) through an ads partner. We can then match that information to Twitter accounts in order to show the matched users a Promoted Tweet with the travel deal. The end result is a highly relevant and useful message for the user. Advertisers will continue to receive the same reports that include how many users saw or clicked on an ad, without identifying who saw it or clicked on it.

More relevant ads with tailored audiences

We have seen impressive results from those advertisers in our beta test using the tailored audiences program over several months’ time. Inbound marketing software platform HubSpot was an early beta tester of tailored audiences. By reaching recent visitors to their web properties with Promoted Tweets, Hubspot saw a lift in engagement rates of 45% with tailored audience campaigns over their historical averages. Krossover, a technology company that analyzes game video for sports coaches, used tailored audiences to drive a 74% decrease in cost per customer acquisition (CPA). Enterprise app performance management company New Relic saw 195% higher conversion rates targeting their website visitors during the beta. We’re excited about the possibilities that tailored audiences will open up for marketers with direct response objectives.

Additionally, Delta Air Lines and their agency partner Digitas participated in the beta testing of tailored audiences. “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,” said Breanne Loso, Media Planner for Digitas.

We’ve made it easy for you to get started with tailored audiences by partnering with leading technology companies that can help you create and transfer audiences to Twitter. Our ads partners who are helping bring this product to market are: Adara, AdRoll, BlueKai, Chango, DataXu, Dstillery, Lotame, Quantcast, ValueClick, and [x+1]. You may work with any of these approved partners, each of which has completed all of the technical integrations with us and has the knowledge to guide you through the set-up process.

Users have privacy choices

While we want to make our ads more useful through tailored audiences, we also want to provide simple and meaningful privacy choices to our users. Twitter users can simply uncheck the box next to “Promoted content” in their privacy settings, and Twitter will not match their account to information shared by our ads partners for tailoring ads. And because Twitter supports Do Not Track (DNT), Twitter will not receive browser-related information (a browser cookie ID) from our ads partners for tailoring ads if users have DNT enabled in their browser. Our Help Center has more information about these options.

Future possibilities

Targeting recent visitors to your website is just one way to use tailored audiences. We believe there are many other possibilities. Think of it as the way to define your own groups of existing and target customers, and connect with them on Twitter.

Ready to get started? Please contact your account team for more information.