Twitter Debuts Interest-Based Ad Targeting, Lowers Min. Bid To One Cent

This is a big step for Twitter’s advertising business: The company has announced that advertisers can now target Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts based on user interests. At the same time, Twitter says it’s also lowering the minimum bid on its auction-based ads to one cent.

Two Types Of Interest-Based Targeting

Twitter is offering two types of interest-based targeting. One involves choosing from more than 350 categories — things like Movies & Television, Personal Finance, Sports and others. Each top-level interest category offers a number of more specific sub-categories, as shown in this image from Twitter’s blog post.

The second new targeting option involves specifying certain Twitter usernames that are relevant to what the advertiser is promoting. Here’s how Twitter explains it:

Custom segments let you reach users with similar interests to that @​username’s followers; they do not let you specifically target the followers of that @​username. If you’re promoting your indie band’s next tour, you can create a custom audience by adding @​usernames of related bands, thus targeting users with the same taste in music.

These are changes that should not only attract new advertisers, but — especially the addition of interest-based targeting — make Twitter’s ads more effective. Twitter says it’s been testing the interest-based targeting with a number of advertisers and they’ve “seen significantly increased audience reach.”

The new targeting is currently rolling out to all advertisers and “should be visible shortly” in the ads interface, a Twitter spokesperson tells us.

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About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.