Targeted tweets | International Business News | Conversis | The ...

In July, Twitter introduced its latest advertising service in the form of targeted tweets. ?It?s a fact ? brands have been on Twitter since our earliest days,? wrote the social network?s Product Manager, Kevin Weil, in a frank blog post. ?But until today, it?s been impractical (for them) to reach people in New York without also reaching followers in Nigeria.?
Clearly consumers in these two, very different markets require localised messaging, which is why Twitter has rolled out its new, ?highly tailored? ads. An enhancement of ?promoted tweets? (paid-for tweets which appear in followers? timelines, conversation trends and search results), targeted tweets allow marketers to reach specific audiences, defined by location, user device and time zone. Critically, brands can now offer exclusive content to followers in New York which won?t be seen by their followers in Nigeria, or even Nebraska.
Perhaps most attractive to businesses though are the opportunities for multinational microblogging, as Weil explained: ?Now global brands that have different launch dates for several countries can send tailored messages at different times, customised for the users in each country.?
What the new targeted tweets feature does, in effect, is allow advertisers to apply the age-old marketing principle of segmentation. As Malcolm McDonald, academic authority on marketing strategy and long-time champion of market segmentation, once put it: ?Nothing in business works unless markets are correctly defined, mapped, quantified and segmented.?Which begs the question of why it?s taken Twitter so long to offer this service to companies, especially as Facebook boasts endless options for targeted advertising.
Unsurprisingly, early adopters of targeted tweets have reported encouraging results. SocialCode, the social marketing agency for The Washington Post, recently released data claiming that the paper saw a tripling of engagement from testing Twitter?s new offering.
The Post segmented its followers by device, sending a tweet about an iPhone story to users of the Apple operating system, iOS. The engagement rate for this audience (clicks, re-tweets and replies divided by total number of impressions) was 5.5 per cent, compared with 1.1 per cent for the same tweet sent without device-specific targeting.
?By targeting users who are most relevant to tweeted content, based on their device of choice, we are able to focus on those who are most likely to respond and react,? said Laura O?Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode.
The launch of targeted tweets represents a fundamental change to Twitter?s advertising platform. And while some critics may argue that the influx of ads will be to the detriment of conversations, it will certainly benefit businesses, not least small ones with niche audiences and limited budgets. It remains to be seen, however, whether the targeting will be extended to personal tweets? #onlyformyiphoneusingnewyorkdwelling9.15amtweetingfollowers
Read more:
Twitter, Advertising Blog, July 2012
The RealTime Report, Twitter?s New Targeted Tweets Deliver 3x Increase In Engagement For The Washington Post, July 2012
Goodfellow Publishers, Market Segmentation 4th edition, August 2012
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