Twitter Acquires TellApart And Partners With DoubleClick

Twitter announced some significant advertising moves with a new partnership and acquisition that are intended to improve the way that it measures advertising performance and attribution. The company has acquired marketing technology firm TellApart, which tracks browsing behavior and serves up ads accordingly. Additionally, Twitter is partnering with Google’s DoubleClick platform to provide advertisers with the ability to track conversions that result from views and other actions on Twitter. Advertisers will also be able to purchase Promoted Tweets using the DoubleClick Bid Manager platform.

This advertising news was announced as part of Twitter’s disappointing earnings report for Q1 2015. Although the company exceeded user-growth estimates, its revenue came in below predictions, which makes these advertising developments an important move for the social media company.

The partnership with DoubleClick will provide Twitter with improved data to illustrate to direct marketers the ways that advertising on its network pays off, and the company explains that its measurement tools will become available on its platform in the coming months.

“Consumers now move fluidly between apps, devices and platforms, and we need measurement models that take this behavior into account,” explained Twitter senior director of product management, Ameet Ranadive, in a blog post. “For marketers to truly understand the consumer path to conversion across multiple devices and platforms, measurement systems have to move beyond traditional attribution models. And we want advertisers to have insights into the rich canvas of actions beyond website clicks on platforms like ours (e.g., Retweets) and the role they play in determining a campaign’s ROI.”

The other part of Twitter’s advertising news, its acquisition of marketing technology company TellApart, is also intended to improve the direct response capabilities of the social network. TellApart provides cross-device retargeting for retailers and e-commerce businesses through dynamic product ads and email marketing. With this acquisition, Twitter aims to make it simpler for marketers to reach audiences as they switch between mobile devices and desktop applications.

“By bringing Twitter and TellApart together, we’ll be able to help performance advertisers reach users wherever they are, whether on desktop or mobile,” wrote Kevin Weil, Twitter’s senior vice president of product. “TellApart brings deep expertise in performance advertising, driving cost-effective return on investment through dynamic product ads and email marketing for clients like Neiman Marcus, Pottery Barn, Sur la Table and Wayfair. With continued investment and expansion through our global sales teams, we believe we can extend TellApart’s services internationally and to industries beyond retail.”

Weil explained that direct response advertising has been a major growth engine for Twitter’s ads business, and the company is confident that its acquisition of TellApart will accelerate its trajectory further.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was an angel investor in TellApart, which was able to raise approximately $17 million before this exit. TellApart co-founder and CEO, Josh McFarland, explained the deal with Twitter in a blog post.

“One of the biggest challenges facing marketers today is the fractured nature of the consumer experience – across devices, between the Web and apps, and between the digital and physical worlds,” wrote McFarland. “While there are no silver bullets to solve this problem for advertisers, we believe that by working together with Twitter we can considerably improve the experience. On desktop, advertisers on our platform reach the right consumers at the right moments, and working with Twitter, we’ll be able to do more for our advertisers to find the right consumers on either mobile, desktop or both.”