In June 2013, Twitter announced plans to launch an experimental retargeting program. Moving forward with the idea, the social media site has launched a new advertising platform ‘Tailored Audiences’ that allows businesses to target ads on Twitter at users who have also visited their websites.
Facebook, too, has tasted success with a similar initiative, but what makes Twitter’s concept is that it is mobile ready, whichin past has been a challenge because of the absence of cookies. With this in mind, Twitter has tried to “tie the identity of a mobile user to what they do on the computer.”
Twitter has also highlighted some statistics about the success that some early advertisers have achieved.
By way of example, marketing software company HubSpot says it witnessed an improvement of 45 percent in engagement over their historical averages.
Companies worried about their privacy can choose not to participate in the retargeting advertising program by unchecking the “promoted content” box in their settings. Twitter also says it won’t receive the browser-based cookie data used for this kind of retargeting if users have enabled Do Not Track in their browsers.
So how does this program work?
Ad partners can use a technique called cookie-mapping, a process that anonymously transfers a segment of users to Twitter. However, no personally identifiable information is exchanged.
Once the transfer occurs, partners gain access to the segmented audience in the Twitter targeting system and can target them for free in advertising campaigns.
Does it make sense to invest your advertising dollars in Twitter Tailored Audience?
Tailored Audience allows you to target users who have already visited your website using Site Retargeting. You can use retargeted tweets to grab your site visitor’s attention, add personal touches and communicate your brand voice.
You can also use the platform to retarget in completely new ways. For example, you can retarget all people who have bought your products with a thank you tweet. Or perhaps reach out to potential customers who started the purchase but failed to make it to the end of the journey.
As with the Facebook FBX, Tailored Audiences allows companies to target a select group of Twitter-approved vendors, some of who bring to the table extremely valuable data on the terms people use to search for products and services on search engines. As an online marketer, you can use this data to send targeted messages based on their search terms. Tailored Audiences also allows companies to reach new customers with Promoted Tweets.
Good luck!