Marketers Can Now Use Twitter Ads To Target By Mobile Carrier And New Devices

Twitter continues to expand the advertising options that are available for targeting mobile users, building on its developments over the past year to allow marketers to target users based on mobile OS, mobile device and wifi connectivity. Now, Twitter has announced the addition of two more options: the ability to target based on mobile carrier and by users with new mobile devices.

In its blog post announcement, Twitter explained the two new targeting options are now available in 35 countries and will be rolled out to its Ads API partners soon. The social media giant offered suggestions about how these new tools can be most effectively used by advertisers, and digital marketers are taking note of the possibilities.

For mobile carrier targeting, Twitter provided the following ideas in its blog post:

• Mobile carriers: If you’re a mobile carrier, you can easily create a loyalty campaign on Twitter by targeting only your customers, and excluding those using other carriers. You can also create an effective customer acquisition campaign by targeting all users except those who already subscribe to your service.
• Mobile manufacturers and app marketers: These marketers can create custom content tailored to people based on their carrier to drive improved performance.
• Other verticals: Advertisers across verticals can create carrier-targeted campaigns that align with their preferred demographic. For example, a CPG brand that knows that users of a certain carrier are more likely to be interested in their product can target those users exclusively to optimize campaign efficiency.

Mobile payments app Softcard tested the carrier targeting functionality in advance of its release, and found it to be very helpful in fine-tuning its campaigns. “Softcard has a unique challenge in that we have three separate versions of our app, which are all mobile carrier-specific,” explained Softcard’s Jeff Mack. “Our biggest challenge in the past was effectively running digital acquisition campaigns where we could push a new user to the correct version of the app. With carrier targeting on Twitter, we’ve been able to overcome that challenge in a big way.”

T-Mobile is another brand that ran some initial tests with Twitter’s carrier targeting functionality, and similarly found great use for this tool. “Twitter is blazing a new trail in the social space with this type of targeting and our early results are very positive,” stated Peter DeLuca, T-Mobile’s Senior Vice President of Brand and Advertising. “More importantly, it’s really helped us extend our Un-Carrier approach of directly speaking to existing and potential customers – and we plan on continuing to refine and expand those efforts.”

The second new tool Twitter is rolling out is the ability to target based on users with new mobile devices. This functionality can be effectively used by marketers who have apps that new users will be particularly interested in when initially setting up their device. This targeting can also be combined with other device targeting, such as keyword, interest or mobile OS, to ensure digital marketing campaigns are carefully directed to those users who are most likely to be interested in a company’s specific messages and products.