2018 - A Comprehensive Guide to Twitter Advertising

Although, Twitter is not that much in demand when it comes to the  media mix selection and creation of the media plan- {not for all but for most of the Marketers and Media planners- if they are in B2C). However, it is still a great platform to reach the typical audience (including niche) and many advertisers still prefer it.

In this article, I will take you through the basics of how to create Twitter campaigns, the objectives available and some of the advanced features. I will not go into the Automated campaign creation, we will focus on Manual campaign creation. I personally prefer creating campaigns manually as it give an Advertiser more power in terms of campaign control and spread including targeting and other selections etc. Also, I will not cover the best practices here as the main aim is to demonstrate how to set up the campaign, technical stuff and available creatives/card and targeting options. I will write another post for the Best Practices including the creatives, copy and other areas relevant to it.

Lets Start!!!!

Types of Twitter Campaigns

Ad Placements or to put simply- Where your ads will appear?


It depends on 2 factors (i) Objectives you select (ii) Placements selection


Please note that not all the placements are available for all the objectives- see below for more details

Here is where your ads will appear:

• In searches
• On your profile and tweet detail pages
• In users’ feeds
• The Twitter Audience Platform

How will you be charged?


Your selected objective decides how your tweet’s performance will be measured and how the pricing of your ad is determined.,for instance:  Awareness campaigns charge you for impressions, Follower campaigns charge you per follow you gain, web clicks and conversion campaigns charge you for website clicks and so on.

Basics of Promoted Tweets

What are Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers. Promoted Tweets are clearly labeled as Promoted when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, Promoted Tweets act just like regular Tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, liked, and more.
Source- Twitter

How do they (Promoted Tweets )look like?


This is how a Promoted tweet looks like- Main text on the top of the image, a link and also the disclaimer of -promoted tweets

NOTE: Before you start promoting Tweets, make sure you gather enough likes, comments and some traction. This will help you to get more leverage and it will already show some interaction data in the form of likes and comments and will help you to reach more and more people.

There is another format, which is known as Twitter cards

With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experiences to Tweets, helping to drive traffic to your website.


Example of a Twitter Card

Below is an example of App Twitter Card, this will help an advertiser drive App Installs

Twitter Card Availability details

Twitter card creation


The process is very simple, see below for more details

Twitter Ads creation

So, enough of theory!!!! Lets jump directly into the campaign and ads creation.

The Zeroth  step is to select Automated vs Manual creation- it will look like below

STEP 1- Objective Selection

This is the 1st step, you need to select the Objective based on your goal. Following objectives are available

Tip - One campaign should be solely focused on one Goal ONLY. create separate campaigns for separate Goals.

STEP 2- Fill Details

After selecting the objective, you will be directed to this screen. In this step, you need to fill some basic details like campaign name, budget and fight dates

STEP 3- AD Group Creation

So, in Step 1 and Step 2 , we created the Ad campaign. Now in this step, we will create the Ad groups

Here, you will select the name, fight dates, bidding type (can be manual or automatic), optimization preferences and Key conversion metrics

STEP 4- Select creatives

This is little bit weird, we are normally used to select the targeting first and the creatives comes at the last. However, in Twitter comes before targeting

You have an option of selecting the available Tweets or create a new Tweet (if you want to create a brand new ad)- marked in red above. 

In this step, add appropriately sized images and Twitter Cards to your Tweet.

Important:  See Orange box and Tip above. If you want to create Tweets that won’t show up until the promotion begins, you have that option by clicking the Promoted Only checkbox.

STEP 5-Select Placements

In this step, you will decide where you want your ads to appear

Select the Ad placements

Select the categories which best describes your ads

Enter the domain name of the business that is running the ad

Also, if you want t create more ads, you can clone the existing ad also. See the option above, in the last

Audience summary

The audience summary bar on the righthand side of the screen helps indicate whether or not your audience is too broad.

Final Step- Review and complete

Finally, you’re sent to a confirmation page where you get to review your information and preview your ad.

Twitter Targeting Options Availability

Following are the targeting options available in Twitter.

1. Location
2. Gender
3. Language
4. Devices, Platforms, and Carriers
5. Keywords, which works like Google’s keywords and allows you to show up in specific searches
6. Followed Accounts, so you can reach users who follow certain accounts similar or complementary to yours
7. (this can be particularly effective if you’re featuring that add in your account)
8. Interests, which can include people interested in job searching, bowling, and cooking
9. TV market, which includes people who have watched certain TV shows or movies, which again can be used to create niche ads
10. Behaviors, which can include everything from Charmin buyers to home gardeners.
11. Events

See the figure above to get more idea about Targeting and selection.

TWITTER TAILORED AUDIENCES

To make sure that Twitter is at par with competitors offering like Google’s remarketing audiences and Facebook’s Custom Audiences, Twitter has added the Tailored Audiences targeting option. This allows advertisers to reach the existing customers or past website visitors and deliver them highly relevant ads.

Lists- Same like Google customer list- you can upload list of email ids, Twitter Ids or Mobile Advertsing ids. It takes usually 3-6 hours

Website visitors- You need to install Twitter pixel and it works exactly as Google or FB

Option for Conversion Events

Below are various option available

Some use cases for Twitter Remarketing

• Remarket website visitors 
• Exclude past converters 
• Use remarketing for lead nurturing 
• Target your email subscribers 
• Deselect “Expand reach by targeting similar users” 

Twitter Video Ads

Creation of Twitter Video Ads is very simple. See below

Summary:

You can upload new videos to Twitter Cards under Creatives > Media.

You’ll also be able to insert a headline, call-to-action, and URL to your ad.

Your videos will auto-play on scroll, encouraging people to tap or click.

SAMPLE AD

Twitter Video Ads specs

File Type: MP4 or MOV

Max Play Time: 2 minutes and 20 seconds (select accounts get 10-minute access)

File Size: Under 1GB recommended

Video Codec: H264, baseline, Main or High profile with 4:2:0 color space

Twitter Cards

Basics - How to start

1. Choose a card type to implement.
2. Add the correct meta tags to the page.
3. Run the URL through the validator tool to test. If you are working with a Player Card, request approval for whitelisting. All other Cards do not need whitelisting.
4. After testing in the validator or approval of your Player Card, Tweet the URL and see the Card appear below your Tweet in the details view.

There are variety of Twitter card available, see below for details

Types of Twitter Cards

Note: Some cards might not be available as of now. Please check your Twitter account to see which are still valid and available

Summary card

Again , 2 types of summary cards (i) General Summary card (ii) summary card with large image

Requirements: General Summary card

Title: 70 characters

Description: 200 characters

Image: at least 120×120 pixels and no more than 1MB

Requirements: Summary Card with large image

Title: 70 characters

Description: 200 characters

Image: at least 280 x 150 pixels and no more than 1MB

When to use Summary Cards?

Summary Cards can be used to  offer a content preview by displaying your title, description and a thumbnail image. The Summary Card can be used for blog posts, news, product pages or any other business news. 

Photo Card

If you have a business or website featuring art or photography, then the Photo Card is very useful for you. Like the summary card with large image, the photo card features an image, title, description and Twitter handle.

Gallery Card

Same as photo card, but you can show 4 pictures

App Card

Good for businesses looking to drive app installs

The app card detects that the user is viewing the tweet on an iPhoneor Android  and directs him/her to the App Store or Play store to download the app-based on the OS on device he/she is using

Player card

The Player Cards have been created in order to promote streaming media like video or audio player inside your tweetThis card puts a live video or audio player within your tweet that users can play on Twitter and in embedded tweets.

Product Card

If you are ecommerce business, this card is very beneficial for you.The product card allows you to include a title, description, thumbnail image and Twitter handle attribution for your product, along with other pertinent details such as price, location, availability, etc.

Lead Generation Card

Best, if you are looking for Leads. When users see a lead generation card, they can click one button and share the email address associated with their Twitter account with you.

Website Card

If you are looking to drive traffic, then this card is for you. You can drive traffic directly to your website’s homepage or other specific landing page.The website card simply includes a thumbnail image representing your website, your website title and a Read More call-to-action button to encourage viewers to click through.

Technical Work to Install Cards

You need to add the appropriate metadata to the head section of your website. This metadata can be found on the developer page, however I am mentioning some metadat card  details of few the cards underneath [the metadata is not needed to be added for lead generation and website cards-To create lead generation cards and website cards, you need to log into the Twitter Ads interface and click on Cards under the Creatives menu. Once you’ve completed your cards, you’ll be given a custom link to add to your tweets.

Once you’ve installed the code for your Twitter cards, use the Twitter Card Validator to ensure everything is working properly and to verify your Twitter cards. Once verified, your cards will start showing up in relevant tweets.

Card validator

The above is how to validate the card , click on the link above and start the validation before going libe

Summary card Metadata

To add it to your website, you need to paste this code in your webpage HTML:

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary” />

<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@yoursite” />

<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Your Title” />

<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Your description.” />

<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”https://where-your-image-is-hosted/name.jpg” />

For summary CARD with Large image, Add this HTML code to set up this type of Twitter Cards:

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>

<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@yourwebsite”>

<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@yourtwitterhandle”>

<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”your title”>

<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”your description.”>

<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”https://where-your-image-is-hosted/name.jpg“>

APP CARD Metadata

Here is the code you should enter:

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”app”>

<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@yourwebsite”>

<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”your description”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:country” content=”your country like US”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:name:iphone” content=”your iphone app name”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:id:iphone” content=”your iphone app ID”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:url:iphone” content=”your iphone app URL”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:name:ipad” content=”your ipad app name”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:id:ipad” content=”your ipad app ID”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:url:ipad” content=”your ipad app URL”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:name:googleplay” content=”your googleplay app name”>

<meta name=”twitter:app:id:googleplay” content=”your googleplay add ID”

TWITTER ANALYTICS

Go to Twitter Analytics and click Twitter cards, you can see all the analytics data there.

You can also check the performance of each card and compare it with other(s) as seen below

Other Important Things to Note

Below are few other things that you can do

Promoted Account

Here, you are promoting an Account , not an individual Tweet.They appear in your target audience’s timeline as well as the all-important ‘who to follow’ suggestion column and in search results.

Promoted Trends

When users click on your Promoted Trend, they will discover a list of search results on your topic with your Promoted Tweet at the top of the pile. If they start to discuss your chosen hashtag with others, your campaign will receive organic exposure

TARGETING OTHER OPTIONS

Source- 

Thanks for reading!

Sarang

Facebook Partner Categories removal and effects on your Media Plan

Facebook announced in late March 2018 that it is getting rid of the Partner categories, this was in response to the Cambridge Analytical Scandal. 


Message from Facebook

“We want to let advertisers know that we will be shutting down Partner Categories. This product enables third party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook,” reads the terse three-sentence post published unattributed to the company’s Newsroom blog. “While this is common industry practice, we believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.”

So this post is about the removal of the partner categories removal and how it will affect your overall media plan.

Basics first

Below is the screengrab of the data you cna get from the partner categories- just an example. 

But what it is exatly?


You perform a certain action away from Facebook. These data mining companies collect this information. They then pass it on to Facebook. Facebook matches it up to your profile. Advertisers can then target you based on that activity.

This can be found under the 'Detailed Targeting'

Examples of Partner Categories targeting include the following:

• Automotive shoppers
• Company size
• Charitable donations
• Credit union member
• Corporate executives
• Retail purchase behavior
• Likely to move
• Business travelers

What is Partner categories (rather what were?)


Partner Categories are based on information provided by Facebook Marketing Partners with the Audience Data Provider specialty. These categories allow you to further refine your targeting based on information compiled by these partners, such as offline demographic and behavioral information like homeownership or purchase history. For businesses that don't have access to customer data of their own to create Custom Audiences, Partner Categories may be a good option.

Availability -Market wise


Partner Categories were available to people targeting audiences located in the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. 


Data Partners

• Acxiom, which can provide data from Australia, France, Germany, the UK and the US
• Acxiom Japan, which can provide data from Japan.
• CCC Marketing, which can provide data from Japan.
• Epsilon, which can provide data from the US
• Experian, which can provide data from Australia, Brazil, the UK and the US
• Oracle Data Cloud (formerly Datalogix), which can provide data from the UK and the US
• Quantium, which can provide data from Australia

How Facebook used to charge you for using these services?

Facebook manages the costs associated with Partner Categories for you automatically to ensure you're not charged more than your bid. When you're using Partner Categories, our system reduces your bid in the auction by no more than 15% to cover data costs.

Examples on usage of Partner Categories

For instance, a company like Pepsi is able to advertise on Facebook using information gleaned from Facebook profiles, information it owns like email addresses, and information it purchases from data aggregators like Experian, which gathers together purchasing history and other valuable information. As part of Partner Categories, Facebook shares revenue with companies like Experian that help inform its data set every time a marketer purchases ad space on Facebook using that data.

Example has been taken from this Source 

Will this affect your media plan and Targeting?


Well, the answer to this can be YES and NO. Let me take a moment to explain this.

Actually, most of us advertisers do not rely very heavily or for that matter heavily on the Partner categories. Even if you ask some of the advertiser on how was his success rate with the partner categories, they will definitely say that they have not gained very much from it.However, certain categories are very much affected by it but still the % is very less. You will only be affected if you are in the 7 markets (see above). However, you can still sue it but definitely it will phase out soon.Note that this not only impacts advertisers accessing this targeting directly through Ads Manager, but also those advertisers who work directly with ad reps to get special Partner Categories access. 

But if your ad targeting is catering to the below categories and you are using Partner categories, you need to be careful and tweak your Digital Media strategy accordingly

Let's have a look at the data categories provided by Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon

Acxiom


Demographics:  you will be able to reach people by “Home” which includes if the person is an owner, renter, their length of residents and so on. You can also target by household size (1 to 6 people).

Financials:  allows you to reach bank card users, credit card users and investors or reach people based on their typical spending method (cash or credit).

Job Role:  target your Facebook ads by job role  including: admin, white collar, blue collar, education, legal professional, financial professional, military, sales, student and more.

Purchase History:  target users based on what they are spending money on such as: gas, computer electronics, office supplies, travel services, vehicles and more.

Datalogix


Auto - target people based on when they last made a vehicle purchase, what brand, body style and make was purchased and whether a person has a high affinity for leasing. You can even choose to target motorcycle owners.

Buying History-   


Demographics - Datalogix offers categories based on travel type (business, cruise, family vacations, international, casino, etc.), hobbies (cat owner, dog owner, RV owner, etc.) and lifestyle interests (auto enthusiast, fashionista, DIYer, gamer, gadget geek, healthy and fit, leisure travelers, spa mavens, etc.).

Retail Purchase History Similar to Acxiom, Datalogix offers Facebook advertisers the ability to target users based on their purchase history. They offer many categories including: children’s product buyers, corporate attire buyers, fitness buyers, men’s fashion buyers, pet supply buyers and more.  Almost any category you can think of you can target using Acxiom data.

Subscription Services Marketers can also choose to target subscription services users with Datalogix categories including: auto insurance, mortgage holders, online students and satellite tv owners.

Epsilon

Type of Business Using Epsilon categories you can target Facebook users who work for a corporation, home office or small office.

Occupation Similar to Acxiom, marketers who need to target users by job type can do so using Epsilon’s Occupation category.

Financials Using the Financials category, Facebook advertisers can target people who currently have an auto loan.

Lifestyle and Interests Under the Lifestyle and Interests Category advertisers can reach people who: donate to charity, are conservative, are liberal, give to veteran causes, are a magazine subscriber and more.


Purchase History Epsilon doesn’t provide comprehensive purchase history targeting like the other two Facebook partners; however they do offer targeting based on whether someone is an online buyer or a retail buyer and how much they spend on average.

This is not the end, even if Facebook has no ties with the 3rd party data vendors, this does not mean you cannot access or buy this data directly from the 3rd party providers as mentioned above. However, this will not come cheap!

Last but not the least- “managed Custom Audiences.” These are audience segments that are uploaded by data providers and shared with advertisers and agencies. According to a note sent to agencies by Facebook, it will now require those uploading managed audiences to confirm the audience was built using only first-party data provided by the brand, not by the data provider.

Thanks for reading

Sarang

Google Responsive Ads-Now with 3 Headlines (Beta Version)- Max 15 Headlines and 4 Descriptions

Google has just rolled out the Responsive Ads new version, below are some of the pointers to be noted

• Currently, its in the Beta phase and is not available to all the advertisers
• Now, you have more real estate for your advertisements
• 3 headlines
• All the combinations happens dynamically
• You just need to set up 1 Ad with multiple headlines and descriptions (more on this below) and Google will test and do some permutations and combinations and will then show the best performing ads- to achieve the Advertising Goal
• Your ad groups will have opportunities to compete in more auctions when there are more options for the keywords to trigger your ads. 
• You might not need the manual A/B testing anymore, it will soon be replaced by Automated testing- Very important to NOTE
• Show up to three headlines instead of two.
• Show up to two 90-character descriptions instead of one 80-character description.
• Set up as many as 15 headlines and four descriptions in a responsive search ad
• During the beta, responsive search ads can only be added to ad groups with existing text ads. 

Where to get it? 

*Note: Its in Beta version, so might not be available to all Advertisers as of now.

How does it look like?

Next Steps

Think of all the possible scenarios as this is an Automated feature. All the headlines have to make sense when in standalone. They should be distinct from each other. Write headlines that are relevant to the keywords in the ad group and including at least one of the keywords in your ad group in the headlines. You can also PIN headlines if you want to show specific Headlines in a specific position. For example, if you need to show a disclaimer in every ad, you can write the disclaimer as a responsive search ad description, and pin it to Description position 1. That way, all ads that are shown to customers will include the disclaimer in the first part of the description.

Tips from Google

• ·         Pinning one headline or description causes it to show only in that specific position, preventing other headlines or descriptions from showing in its place. Since pinning reduces the overall number of headlines or descriptions that can be matched to a potential customer’s search, pinning isn’t recommended for most advertisers.
• ·         Try pinning 2 or 3 headlines or descriptions to each position so that any of them can show in that position. This gives you more flexibility to find out which headlines or descriptions perform better.
• ·         Example: If you pin the headline “Official Website” to Headline position 1, then all ads that customers see will have “Official Website” as the first headline. However, if you pin a second headline—let’s say “The Official Site”—to Headline position 1, then all ads that customers see will show either “Official Website” or “The Official Site” as the first headline.
• ·         If you have headlines and/or descriptions pinned to all available positions, unpinned headlines and/or descriptions won’t show.
• ·         Headlines or descriptions pinned to Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1 will always show. Content pinned to Headline position 3 and Description position 2 are not guaranteed to show in every ad. If you have content that must show in every ad, we recommend pinning it to Headline position 1 or Description position 1.

 Thanks for reading

Sarang