Twitter announced several updates to its promoted tweets feature on Thursday, allowing brands and marketers to improve the accuracy of their targeting and to make promoted tweets more relevant in searches. Twitter started experimenting with promoted tweets back in 2010, and they will be a crucial product in the company’s focus on monetization.
“Every day, millions of people use Twitter search to understand what’s happening in real time. Search is also where we debuted the very first Promoted Tweets back in April 2010, and it remains a great way to reach a relevant audience with your content,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Among the changes that Twitter outlined in a blog post Thursday:
- The launch of negative keyword targeting will allow brands to note which words they do not want associated with their tweets. Twitter used the example of a bacon company trying to disassociate with Kevin Bacon. But with cases like a McDonald’s marketing campaign gone horribly wrong for the company, or advocates attaching a spoofed hashtag not approved by Victoria’s Secret to the company’s name, it’s easy to see why companies would seek negative as well as positive keyword targeting.
- A bulk import tool will allow brands to upload the keywords they want to use.
- Brands will be able to automatically attach a promoted tweet to trending topics. Kate Middleton announces she’s pregnant? Go ahead and attach your promoted tweets for baby clothes to the trending topic.
For Twitter, this year is all about monetization, and if it can make promoted tweets and in-stream advertising work, especially on mobile, it will have a major leg up on companies like Facebook, which have struggled more with the task.
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