07. Advertising on Twitter
What ad types does Twitter offer?
Twitter organizes its different ad types by campaign objective: i.e., the action an advertiser wants a user to perform. Depending on which campaign objective you choose, the ad will be displayed in a different format, which Twitter calls “Cards.” For detailed technical specifications of the different card types, take a look at Twitter’s documentation.
Here is an overview of the different campaign objectives you can choose from, and what the ads look like to the user:
Tweet engagement
Promote a new or existing tweet to your target audience. You pay for engagement with the tweet, e.g., clicks, retweets, likes, follows and replies. If you prefer to maximize brand awareness and care less about engagement, you can book an Awareness campaign. Here you pay for the number of impressions (CPM).
You can attach up to four images to your tweet. If you do this, only 116 characters are available for your Tweet, as 24 characters are used for the images.
Video views
Embed a video in a tweet and promote it to your desired audience. Your videos will auto-play muted on scroll, encouraging users to tap or click to open the tweet and watch. Twitter will show your ad as a “Video Card” that consists of your ad copy (max. 140 characters), a video, a video title (max. 70 characters), and a video description (max. 200 characters). You pay for video views, which Twitter defines as follows: “A view occurs when a video is at least 50% in-view on the user’s device and has been watched for at least 2 seconds, or the user clicks to watch the video in fullscreen.”
Promoted tweet with video
Grow your followers
If you want to promote your Twitter account and grow your follower base, this is the ad type for you. Twitter suggests to your target audience that they follow your account, and also indicates whether any of their followers follow your account. These ads show up in the user feed and in the “Who to follow” sidebar on Desktop. You pay for every follower the ad generates.
Website visits
Drive your audience to your website using this campaign type. Twitter will display your message in a “Website Card” that consists of your ad copy (max. 116 characters), an image and a website title/description (max. 70 characters). You will pay for website link clicks.
Promoted tweet for website visits
Website conversions
This ad type makes use of the “Website Card” shown above, but optimizes campaigns for conversions such as purchases or downloads on your website. Advertisers have to integrate the Twitter website tag on their site, so Twitter can track conversion. User data about interests and intent helps Twitter optimize the campaign delivery. Although the objective is conversion, you still pay for website link clicks.
App installs and re-engagements
If your campaign objective is to generate downloads of your mobile app or motivate people to open it again, this could be a great ad type for you. This promoted tweet is shown as an “App Card” which consists of an ad copy (116 characters), an image, the app name, price and rating (pulled from the app store), and a call to action button. You can choose to either pay for app link clicks or app installs.
Promoted tweet for app installs
Lead generation
With the lead generation campaign type, you can create promoted tweets that aim to collect the user’s email address, so you can follow up with a newsletter or offer. The Lead Generation Card includes your ad copy (116 characters), a Call to Action button (20 characters), a short description (50 characters) and an image. If a user clicks the Call to Action button, Twitter will submit the name and email associated with the user’s Twitter account and show a customizable message (100 characters). You pay for the number of leads generated.
Promoted tweet for lead generation
What targeting options does Twitter offer?
Twitter offers the following nine targeting options that you can combine as needed:
| Target by | Description |
|---|---|
| Location | Target users by country, state, region, metro area, or ZIP code. |
| Gender | You can target only male or only female users or both. Twitter infers genders from information users share as they use Twitter, e.g., their profile names. |
| Languages | By default, Twitter delivers campaigns to all languages, so make sure to target only people who understand your message. |
| Devices, Platforms and Carriers | Target users who use specific mobile devices (e.g. iOS, Android, Blackberry) and mobile phone carriers (e.g. AT&T, Verizon) to access Twitter. You can also target users based on when they first used Twitter on a new device or carrier. |
| Interest | Target users based on 25 interest categories that expand into 350 subtopics, from Automotive to Travel. Twitter identifies user interests based on what content users engage with and what usernames they follow. |
| Followers | Provide Twitter with a list of usernames and your ad will reach users who have similar interests as those who follow any of the accounts you have listed. |
| Keyword | Reach users based on the keywords of their search queries, recent Tweets, and Tweets they recently engaged with. For each keyword, you can define whether you want to target users with exact keyword matching, broad matching (i.e., Twitter will also target related keywords) or negative matching (i.e., Twitter won’t target users who match for this keyword). |
| Behavior | To target users based on their online and offline behavior (e.g., product or shopping preferences), Twitter utilizes user data that third-party data providers have shared with them. |
| ** Target Audience** | With tailored audiences, you can target existing customers, leads or website visitors. To do this, you have to upload a list of emails, Twitter IDs or mobile advertising IDs. Alternatively, you can put a code snippet on your website so Twitter can identify your website visitors. You can either focus a campaign on a tailored audience, or exclude the tailored audience if you prefer to reach only new prospects. |
What is the minimum budget to advertise on Twitter?
Twitter requires you to set up a maximum daily budget for your campaigns, after which Twitter will stop distributing your ad. Optionally, you can also set a maximum budget for the duration of the whole campaign. The cost of an action (defined by campaign type, as explained earlier) depends on how much other advertisers, who compete with you for the same audience, bid. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Twitter does not ask you to commit a minimum budget.
How to get started
To get started you need an active Twitter account. Go to https://ads.twitter.com/ and you will be prompted with a screen where you select your campaign objective. These objectives match the ones we have discussed above. If you get stuck, have a look at Twitter’s documentation here.
Case Study
L’Oréal Paris Australia wanted to drive traffic and engagement from exclusive TV content around red carpet events, using Twitter. To do this, the brand used Promoted Tweets, a Promoted Trend and a Twitter Amplify campaign that directed users to L’Oréal’s Get the Look Website.
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Next, we will have a closer look at advertising on Pinterest.