Twitter Advertisers Can Now Target Categories Of Installed Apps

Twitter today introduced an advertising tool that enables targeting people based on the categories of apps they have installed on their phones.

The company said the new targeting feature will allow app advertisers to reach people more likely to be interested in their companies’ apps. The feature also allows targeting of users in app categories related to those they have installed and combine with other Twitter ad targeting. Twitter product manager Deepak Rao explained in a blog post:

With installed app category targeting, you can identify new audiences of high-quality users to target within your existing app category and in related app categories. You can also combine this feature with other targeting types — such as keyword, language or location targeting — to further customize the potential audience for your campaign.

For example, an advertiser who wants to drive installs of a task management app can select the “Productivity” category to reach users who have recently installed similar apps. That same advertiser may know that productivity app users also tend to use finance apps, so they can target the “Finance” category to connect with new people who are likely to be interested in their app.

Twitter also said it has added reporting and analytics tracking for installed app categories within the advertiser dashboard. The reports are available for all mobile app promotion campaigns, even if the campaigns haven’t used app category targeting.

There are multiple ways to leverage these powerful insights. For example, if you’re running a campaign targeting users who have installed entertainment apps, you can use this reporting to identify other types of apps they also have installed — and then explicitly target those new categories. More from Twitter’s post:

Or, you can identify which app categories yield the strongest install rates and lowest cost per install, and use this data to target high performing app categories in future campaigns.

Installed app targeting and reporting for both iOS and Android devices is available globally to advertisers running mobile app install and engagement campaigns.