New Twitter keyword targeted ads

Digital advertising. Typically we use things like Facebook and Twitter raise awareness of our products and brands. We’re not necessarily looking to get people to buy but just like “display” advertising we’re trying to get our message in front of loads of people in the hope that when they do come to buy, they’ll remember us and buy from us. We might even be trying to drive up demand or create demand.

We use Facebook, Twitter and display for these things because although we can target on demographics and geographics we don’t actually know the intent to buy is there.

To get people to buy from us when the intent is there we use Google Adwords. We target people searching for things like “buy max factor mascara”.

Here we’re are looking for the click. And that click can be expensive. It’s expensive because the intent to buy is there. Whereas, for example, Facebook advertising is a lot cheaper, especially in a CPM model where you pay by the 1,000 impressions (times) your ad was served (shown).

But that changed a few days ago when Twitter said it would be introducing ads that could target words within Tweets that people had either sent themselves or if they had engaged with a Tweet from someone else that used that word.

So for example

@NorwichCulture “What is the name of that make up Kate Moss advertises?”

Could be targeted with an ad from any number of cosmetic . The ad would appear in my timeline. Apparently click through rates on Twitter are really good.

Facebook are using their search facility to serve up alternative sponsored results. So if you’re looking for the Honda page, Toyota might crop up in the search results. They call these “typeahead” ads. It won’t be long before they introduce an element of re-targeting (sites you visited before you got to Facebook advertising within Facebook) and there is no reason why they can’t target ads on what you’ve said in your updates or updates you’ve liked or commented.

This is all bad news for Google. But for the time being they are the masters of intent based advertising in the same way that Kate Moss may be getting on a bit – but she is still at the top of her game.

Knife Box Digital is a digital advertising and marketing consultancy based in Norwich and London. Thx!