Getting Started With Twitter Ads

5 March 2020
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Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Our today’s article deals with setting up ads on Twitter. So, let’s skip the long introduction and get straight down to business.

What is Twitter and how to work with it?

Twitter is a social networking service that allows you to send and receive short messages called “tweets”. Most people would agree if I say that this is by far not the most popular ad platform. Whenever I’m having a conversation with marketers and ask them a question about Twitter, they all shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes. 

Obviously, the network has a bad word-of-mouth reputation and has long been pigeonholed as a total waste of marketing budget.

But is that really so? What demographics can you target on Twitter? How to buy ads on this platform?

Let’s take a closer look.

Personal opinion about Twitter 

I was working with Twitter almost four years ago and had to deal with multiple account blocks, rejected ads and the inability to use new accounts to launch ads. I promise I won’t keep ranting about this throughout the entire article.

Yours faithfully,

 Forbidden

What you need to launch ads on Twitter

Before creating an ad campaign on Twitter, you will find out that this network is truly unique in many respects. It has been integrated with a number of platforms through which you can buy ads such as Google Doubleclick Bid Manager, The Trade Desk, GroupM UK Limited, Criteo, and Httpool. Moreover, I’m sure this list is far from complete.

In addition to all the companies mentioned above, you can also buy ads through ads.twitter.com

If you decide to follow a simple route and buy ads directly from Twitter, you will inevitably come across these issues:

  • new accounts cannot create ads (purchasing an account can solve this problem);
  • your account should be open and active;
  • the cover and URL of your account must coincide with your ads’ URL.

Once you get all matters settled, you will be able to create and set up ads. Twitter ad accounts are similar to that on Facebook, so it’s unlikely you will come across any difficulties.

What’s inside?

Twitter advertising has a three-level structure: campaigns – ad groups – ads.

Businesses can choose between different objectives such as followers, conversions, app installs, and so on.

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Then, set your campaign budget and choose whether to launch your campaign straight away or schedule it for later.

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Now, you can set up your bidding. Twitter allows you to choose between the following bid options:

  • automatic bid to get the best results at the lowest price;
  • maximum bid to control the bid amount yourself;
  • target bid to set the bid you would like to pay per billable action.

Once you’ve made your selections, choose whether you’re going to pay per click or per conversion:

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

The next step would be to set up your audience targeting criteria:

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Twitter allows you to define your target audience by:

  • GEO;
  • gender;
  • language;
  • keywords;
  • interests;
  • followers;
  • behaviors;
  • events.

The final step would be to create or select a promoted tweet and choose between the following ad placement options: users’ timelines, profiles and Tweet detail pages, search results, and Twitter Audience Platform.

The moderation process takes about 24 hours.

Alternative ways to promote your ads on Twitter

Some Twitter accounts engage in spam posting as a form of promotion. Spammers often use ZennoPoster or other automation software to manage multiple accounts and ad campaigns. To tap into this marketing technique, you should first warm up your account and use hashtags to promote your ad tweets.

Here are some examples of spam tweets:

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Gambling

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Dating

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

Nutra

Twitter demographics

While I was searching for some noteworthy information on Twitter demographics, I came across the following Twitter audience insights:

  • There is a total of 1.3 billion Twitter accounts, but only 328 million of these are active.
  • The average Twitter user has 707 followers.
  • 500 million tweets are posted every single day.
  • 65.8% of American companies with 100+ employees use Twitter as a marketing tool.
  • Twitter estimates 23 million of its active users are actually bots.

Here’s Twitter audience breakdown by location as of January 2020:

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

The graph shows that most Twitter users come from the US. Japan and the United Kingdom rank second and third respectively.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, Twitter’s daily active users accounted for 152 million.

The graph below shows the use of different social media platforms by demographic groups in the US:

Getting Started With Twitter Ads

So, 18 to 24-year olds make up the biggest demographic group of Twitter users in the United States. At the same time, most of them claim that they earn an average income of $75000 and more. This is one of the reasons why many sources call Twitter a social media platform for the wealthy, but you should probably take this with a grain of salt.

Twitter marketing statistics

Twitter is regularly reporting on its ad sales. In the third quarter of 2019, the network noted that users were increasingly engaging with ads on Twitter. Video is an ad format Twitter advertisers favor the most (video ads are 50% cheaper in cost-per-engagement). Twitter users spend 26% more time with ads than other social media users, so there’s definitely something to think about.

Conclusions

Twitter is one of the most underrated marketing tools among affiliates, although it can’t be said that all marketers should test it out no matter what. This would be an overgeneralization, as everything depends on your offer. If you are promoting some whitehat stuff, then you should probably consider using Twitter as a traffic source. If you are working in the grey zone, you’re unlikely to pass moderation on Twitter. There are lots of case studies on the Internet where marketers from major companies describe how they gave Twitter a try and were pleasantly surprised by the results. Affiliate case studies on driving traffic from Twitter are much less numerous, though. Still, this social media platform is definitely worth a try.

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