Keyword Targeting Now Available for Marketers on Twitter

Twitter has released a new service option for advertisers that lets them target people by keywords from their recent tweets.

“This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent – because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context,” says Twitter Revenue product manager Nipoon Malhotra. “For example: let’s say a user tweets about enjoying the latest album from their favorite band, and it so happens that band is due to play a concert at a local venue. That venue could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords for that band with a Tweet containing a link to buy the tickets. That way, the user who tweeted about the new album may soon see that Promoted Tweet in their timeline letting them know tickets are for sale in their area.”

In testing Twitter says they saw engagement rates as high as 11%. This seems like a great step forward for Twitter and a great new option for marketers. It brings Twitter closer to Google and search engine pay-per-click advertising in a way, though still not as effective. People on Google are showing an intent and interest in information, cognitively aware and perhaps in buying and decision making mode. This is what makes Google and search so valuable to marketers. Though some people may be interested in a product or service they mention in a tweet, it’s also a strong possibility they are just mentioning it, or even saying something negative about it..