Twitter took a large leap forward with their advertising platform Wednesday morning by introducing a new advanced interface that allows for keyword targeting. Twitter sent out a mass email to existing Twitter Ads users stating:

“You can reach users at the right time and in the right context based on keywords in their Tweets and the Tweets they’ve recently engaged with. Simply specify the keywords you want to target and then add on targeting for location, device and gender.”

The keyword targeting works by showing ads to Twitter users who have Tweeted or interacted with a Tweet that the advertiser is targeting. Twitter provided a couple of examples as to how the new feature might be utilized.

• Travel brands can target newlyweds Tweeting about their prospective honeymoon plans.
• Retailers can place discounts in front of fashionistas who engage with Tweets showing the latest designer jeans.
• Bakeries can reach the hungry guy or gal who just Tweeted about their afternoon snack craving.

Advanced Interface

The Advanced Interface feature has been available to some users since March (by invitation only) but went live to all users Wednesday (April 17).

Analytics

The new Advanced Interface also provides much more in-depth analytics on Timeline activity, interaction by followers, and tracking information on an advertiser’s website via a tracking code.

Conclusion

This is a brand new feature and only time will tell what affect this will have on Twitter Ads. But for now, this seems like a very useful new tool for the more advanced Twitter advertisers. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

The post Twitter Ads Introduces Keyword Targeting appeared first on Portent.

I noticed there were many “how to get started” posts but few data-supported case studies with results. Armed with PPC intern Tim, a $100 head start from a promo code and some curiosity, we put Twitter ads to the test.  Below are our results, observations and speculations.

But as always, remember that your mileage may vary.

Setting Up Your Twitter Ad

This part was easy. Use a $100 code if you can and give yourself a head start. The trick is deciding what to promote, when and for how long. In our case we determined that it was unlikely that people would want to “buy” PPC or SEO services from us via Twitter, so we settled on:

• A free webinar on SEO for small businesses
• A free email series on internet marketing for the holidays
• A $9.95 eBook on ad copy for PPC
• Portent as a promoted account

As we went along, we found that Twitter ads “burn out” even faster than Facebook ads, so the testing period for each of these tweets lasted no more than 5 days.

Results for the Free Webinar

This was our most fiscally “aggressive” effort, spending the $100 code and another $100 just to see how many sign-ups we could get. We promoted a total of 3 tweets over 8 days, turning all ads off the morning of the webinar:

As you can see, the first tweet (where we spent the most cash), yielded the most impressions, the third tweet landed the best CTR and the second tweet resulted in the most sign ups. We used the same two hashtags each time: #smallbiz and #portentu, and mentioned the Twitter handle of the presenter as well. (The “X” for conversions on the first tweet is where intern Tim learned about tagging destination URLs for GA.)

We ran each tweet at $150 budget per day within the suggested bid range of $1.50 and made no changes to the bids until we decided to turn off that particular tweet. The majority of impressions came in the first 12 hours; that number slowly declined over the next day or two until we either turned the ad off or promoted a different tweet of the same content. None of the ads reached their daily budget. Not even close.

Results for the Holiday Email Series

On a whim, we decided to promote our email holiday series on internet marketing strategy.

And how did the promotion turn out?  The answer: not great. No sign ups. This ad also ran at $150 per day with $1.50 bid.

Results for the eBook

So what happens if you try to sell something directly? We chose my ad copy eBook because it is our newest offering in the Portent Store, has a friendly price point and well, it’s awesome. Unfortunately, we learned that yes, no one wants to buy anything on Twitter unless it’s the shirt off Robert Pattinson’s back:

We increased the CPC bid on this one to $2 to see if that would garner more clicks. It seems to have worked, since out of all the tweets this one racked up the most impressions and clicks over 3-4 days when compared to our second place tweet (re: the webinar).

Results for the Promoted Account

At this point, we decided to see if we might gain a few more followers by paying for a promoted account. I have to say I was surprised when we picked up 47 for $106. Not bad at $2.26 per follower. Depending on what your grand plans are, this could be a nice way to build your follower list.

Overall Observations on Twitter Ads

• Promoting our tweet stream via Twitter ads seems to lead to more impressions, but since the social media department runs Portent’s feed to engage in broad conversations, we might actually wind up shooting ourselves in the foot. For example, we like to retweet and send out links from other cool people — and while these people are cool, we’re not into paying to send them our visitors.
• Don’t forget to tag your ads! The first webinar tweet might have garnered some sign ups, but someone at Portent forgot to tag the ads.
• The ads update in real time so it’s actually quite mesmerizing to watch when you first launch.

Will we try Twitter ads again? Yes and No.

Yes. We found Twitter ads to be more effective for garnering sign-ups on the webinar than Facebook ads or AdWords, and cheaper and easier to manage as well. If we feel like picking up a few more followers later on, or have a big thing happen in the world of PR (like our CEO Ian Lurie gets to be a contestant on The Price is Right), we’ll pick the promoted account back up again.

And no. For the eBooks, email series and anything we “sell,” Twitter ads just aren’t worth it… unless there is a sparkly vampire’s shirt attached.

The post Twitter Ads: Terrible or Terrific? appeared first on Portent.