Twitter improves tweet targeting options to help advertisers reach specific audiences

Twitter has taken the most obvious next step in its quest to become an attractive destination for advertisers: It’s just released targeted tweets, the latest enhancement to its Promoted Tweets ad product that lets brands pay to place tweets in front of select audiences.

Promoted Tweets is the Twitter ad product that gives advertisers a for-charge way to gain additional exposure for their tweets in Twitter search or as part of the stream.

Targeted tweets, available today to all advertisers that use the Promoted Tweets product, gives companies a way to push these promotional messages out just to the Twitter users they want to reach in specific geographic regions or on a particular device. Promoted Tweets can be targeted at the country level or at the regional level in the U.S., according to Twitter’s website.

“Now global brands that have different launch dates for several countries can send tailored messages at different times, customized for the users in each country,” product manager Kevin Well said in a blog post. “Mobile app providers who only want to reach customers on one device can do so without also sending the message to desktop users.”

The geographic and mobile targeting options were already available to advertisers, though previously they had to first publish the tweet to all of their followers.

The enhanced targeting options, which have been tested by partners British Airways and Coca Cola in recent weeks, come just as new research has surfaced to suggest that Twitter’s mobile click-through rate of 0.226 percent is one-fourth that of Facebook’s mobile click-through rate of 1.1 percent. Twitter may be able to up its CTR with these additional targeting options, which should help advertisers reach audiences more likely to engage with their tweets.

Update: TBG Global, the company behind the research cited in this story, revised its findings. The company now says Twitter Promoted Tweets see 1 percent to 3 percent engagement rates on desktop, and even higher rates on mobile.

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