Twitter Ads API

Twitter Ads APITwitter officially launched their Ads API recently allowing marketers to work with chosen partners (Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital) in order to manage Twitter Ad campaigns in a quicker and automated way. They will use Twitter in much the same way they manage marketing campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn using CRM platforms. For the time being it is unclear how long Twitter will work with only the five of them.

Twitter says that its focus has been on delivering better ads instead of more ads, encouraging ads that are “engaging, relevant and useful” and they will be leveraging the ability they have to deliver targeted ads. This would make Twitter the second-screen ad platform of choice after Facebook and will be starting a Certified Ads Products program just like Facebook. We can only think about the kind of revenue boost this will be for Twitter.

Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends are the 3 advertising options on Twitter. If a company pays to promote an account or tweet, the account or tweet appears at the top of results for searches of relevant terms. The advertising options also cause tweets or account handles to appear elsewhere on Twitter like for example on widgets. Promoted Trends, remain exclusive to Twitter enabling a company to surface its brand in the form of a hashtag on Twitter users’ trend sidebars.

Today, other major platforms like Foursquare, Pinterest and Google+ remain without an ad API.

It seems that Twitter took its time to study Facebook & LinkedIn ads before drafting its own strategy to ensure the success of the ads API. Soon it will be easier to compare how campaigns on all 3 platforms perform.

Would you invest in Twitter ads?