Los Angeles — In a move to further expand its dominance, popular micro-blogging outfit Twitter has taken the most apparent next step in its quest to become an attractive destination for advertisers: It has just unveiled today a new advertising tool dubbed as targeted promoted tweets, which means advertisers can send tailored messages based on where users live and what devices they are on.
As of today, brands can target Twitter users by location with their promoted tweets. For instance, Targeted tweets, available to all advertisers that use the Promoted Tweets product, empowers companies a compensated 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.
“Until today, it has been impossible to send these kinds of highly customized Tweets, since there was no way to reach people in New York without also reaching followers in Norway, Nebraska and Nigeria who can not take advantage of your offer,” Twitter said in a blog post.
For example, if a brand wants to promote a tweet concerning a promotion that is only taking place in Los Angeles — they can simultaneously promote the tweet to their users in the L.A. area, or California or however specific of a location they wish.
From the Twitter Advertising blog:
Today we are introducing targeted Tweets, an enhancement that enables brands to reach specific audiences on Twitter without first sending a Tweet to all followers. 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. Mobile app providers who only want to reach customers on one device can do so without also sending the message to desktop users.
Twitter first experimented with this feature with some big global brands like Coca-Cola and Wendy’s, but now, global brands can send tweets at different times with customized messages for specific countries. “Mobile app providers who only want to reach customers on one device can do so without also sending the message to desktop users,” Twitter said.
Twitter indicated to a recent tweet from British Airways targeted at U.K. users, which said: “Our ad shows our plane in London. But it can go all over the UK. Enter FYI14BJ & see where we are now.”
This advertising tool is certainly meant to attract to global brands, enabling them to send messages at different times and for users in different countries.
In addition, “As with all Promoted Tweets, advertisers only pay when users engage with it, and Tweets that generate the most engagement are likely to appear more often,” Twitter said. “Simply put, advertisers are compensated for messages that resonate with audiences.”
In fact, 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.
Moving forward, just last month, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the company’s mobile platform had surpassed its website in generating advertising revenue. On the consumer side, Twitter has released a number of updates to its service in recent months, including tailored trends, as well as expanded tweets and a revamped iPhone app.