Twitter bids to give brands more ad choice
Twitter has aped Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer Programme with the launch of its own scheme, which will allow marketing service providers to access its technology with the aim of giving marketers more flexibility over how they manage their campaigns on the site as part of their wider digital mix.
The Twitter Ads API programme launched today (20 February) with five partners: Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital. It is currently evaluating the next round of partners to join the scheme.
Brands who are customers of those service providers will now have the option to integrate Twitter desktop and mobile ads into their existing search, display and social campaign management dashboards. Initially the Twitter Ads API programme will not include extra functionality – such as additional targeting – but it is hoped by opening up the API, there will be increased innovation around the way brands approach its ad products.
Twitter says the programme will help brands scale their campaigns and signals a move that it is providing advertisers with more choice.
The site will be hoping the increased integration of its own API into campaign management tools will boost the amount of Promoted Tweet, Account and Trend products brands buy.
April Underwood, Twitter Ads API programme project manager, told Marketing Week: “One of the most basic things we are trying to solve is that we know marketers don’t just advertise on Twitter. The partners we have chosen make tools that some of our clients have already told us they love, so this allows our parnters to be a one stop shop for marketers to manage campaigns across all channels and get reporting data.”
Adobe says it has been testing the functionality with customers such as Levi Strauss & Co. and its own Twitter accounts, integrating the Promoted Accounts API into its Media Optimiser tool. It says the Media Optimiser helped increase its Adobe Marketing Cloud follower base by 63 per cent, while decreasing the cost per follow by close to 60 per cent.
The Twitter Ads API programme builds on its existing Certified Product Programme, which badges the developers that best use its data to help brands “flourish” on the site. It aims to make it easier for marketers to track down the best partners that use its ecosystem for engagement, analytics and data reselling purposes.
Both schemes are similar to Facebook’s “Preferred Marketing Developer” initiative, which it established last year. It subsequently launched a “Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer Scheme” to mark out its choice of the most elite third party companies that use its software to offer services to marketers.
