Twitter seeks more, better advertising with new API

Looking to manage more than a few promoted tweets for your company? The arrival of the Twitter advertising API could spell changes for how you go about that. The company announced the API’s arrival on Wednesday, a product that will allow brands to manage tweets across multiple platforms and on a larger scale than was previously available. The company has initially launched with a select few partners, including Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

Twitter explained the release and what it means for brands in a blog post:

“What this means is that as marketers, you’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns — and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies. Equally important, users will continue to see the most relevant Promoted Tweets from advertisers. With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale.”

The companies will use Twitter’s API to let brands manage Twitter advertising on a larger scale through existing analytics products from companies like Adobe or Salesforce, letting the brands manage promoted tweets and target them at specific audiences. Some of the companies that Twitter is launching with have already been experimenting with the product, and unsurprisingly appear to be satisfied so far, like Adobe, which wrote a blog post pointing to improvements in advertising coming from the API integration:

“Our work has integrated Twitter’s Promoted Product Ads APIs into Adobe Media Optimizer, the only cross-channel digital advertising platform in the industry that manages, optimizes and accurately forecasts the performance of ad campaigns across social, search and display.

By using granular targeting, testing different bid levels and segmenting campaigns by regions, Media Optimizer was able to increase our follower base by 63%. At the same time, we saw the total Cost Per Follow (CPF) decrease by close to 60%, or approximately $ 2.00. Two key components of our CPF improvement were accessing less expensive impressions as well as achieving better conversion rates from those impressions.”

Twitter has previously let companies manage promoted Tweets, but giving them the ability to target specific audiences and locations makes sense as Twitter makes it easier to advertise on its platform generating revenue as it aims for an expected IPO later this year or next year.