Twitter now lets advertisers bid on mobile ads based on installs, not just app clicks

Twitter has introduced two new offerings for advertisers to hopefully get the most bang for their marketing dollars. Starting today, brands can pay for their mobile app install campaigns through two additional offerings: optimized action bidding and cost per install bidding.

What’s significant about this is that bidding is done on the number of installs, but what you pay can differ between either the app click or install.

Deepak Rao, a product manager on Twitter’s revenue team, said that the biggest challenge marketers face is “balancing cost efficiency with volume.” For some advertisers looking to gain traction for their apps, getting people to click through isn’t sufficient — they want the actual installation of the apps in order to justify their marketing spend. Paying by app click may be too expensive for their taste.

With optimized action bidding, marketers can bid on the install instead of the app click, which Rao said will help maintain scale while “driving increased campaign efficiencies.” However, you’d pay for each app click.

On the other hand, there’s also cost per install bidding, which will let marketers bid and pay for app installs.

Rao said that during Twitter’s beta testing, advertisers wound up lowering their costs across their app install campaigns.

These new options will probably be welcome by marketers, who obviously want to be smart about where they spend their money. And Twitter is always looking to generate more money from brands, as $452 million of the company’s $502 million in revenue last quarter came from advertising. By being flexible, Twitter is hoping to better appeal to advertisers and show that it’s a more affordable option than others and can drive the installs that they’re looking for.

If you’re interested in using optimized action bidding and/or cost per install bidding, you can do so now — it’s available globally to all advertisers who are running Twitter’s mobile app promotion campaigns with conversion tracking enabled.