Twitter lets brands target its 500 million logged out users for the first time

The move, which will also allow people who click on links to tweets via Google Search to see ads, comes as Twitter attempts to open up its advertising platform to the biggest audience possible.

In a blog post, Twitter’s revenue product manager Deepak Rao said: “By letting advertisers tap into the total Twitter audience, they will be able to speak to more people in new places using the same targeting signals, ad creative, and measurement tools.

“This test will support campaign driving website clicks or conversions, or video views. To start, these Promoted Tweets and Videos will appear on profile pages and Tweet detail pages on desktop web only. We are doing this as marketers want to scale their marketing campaigns to a large audience, and maximise the opportunities they have to connect with that audience. “

Initially the changes will be a test with select advertisers in the US, UK, Japan, and Australia, before being rolled out further.

Big ambitions for 2016

The broadening of its advertising comes as Twitter looks to improve on its number of active and signed up users.

Responding to a question (which suggested Twitter wasn’t doing enough to entice the 500 million people who visit monthly but are not signed in) during the Barclays’ Global Technology Brokers Conference this week, its CFO and marketing boss Anthony Noto said: “We are working very hard to make Twitter simple and able to deliver value instantly. And that’s exactly that we are focused on.

“It will take not just the product changes to do that, but it will also take integration with content and an integration with marketing. And that’s the path we are going down to really capture this opportunity in front of us to really attract that next 60% to 70% of the people that don’t use the product.”

Back in August, Twitter extended its mobile ad offering to third-party apps, making promoted tweets and video ads available beyond Twitter, in a move that it claimed could double its ad audience to 700 million.

And, citing internal research which suggests that its users spend 123% more time with ads on the Twitter Audience Portal than traditional mobile interstitial ads, Twitter’s Noto is convinced its ad business will be successful in 2016.

“Twitter occupies a very unique marketplace position within advertising,” he added. “We pioneered the need for mobile advertising which allowed us to really start with the hardest advertisers who we convinced to try a new advertising format, such as digital mobile ads. And that’s allowed us to build really strong relationships not just with the brands at the top of the pyramid, but with the agencies which are also key decision-makers.

“We can uniquely provide value both at the top of the pyramid from a branding perspective and then on an acquisition basis at the bottom of the pyramid. So, we think that uniqueness has really served us well and will continue to do so into the future.”