‘Twitter set for official roll out of retargeted ads’

The influential tech blog cites sources close to the developments, claiming the service could be formally unveiled this week following an initial trial period that began in July, although it does add that details are “hazy”.

Twitter declined to comment in TechCrunch’s initial report, and did not respond to Marketing Week’s further request for comment by time of publication.

Such a roll out means that brands will technically be able to target Twitter users with promoted tweets based on their previous web activity and other data collected by the social network, using cookies.

This can help brands build a ‘single customer view’ and use this to then target their ads across devices. For instance, if a Twitter user was to visit a retailer’s website on their desktop to research a specific purchase, the retailer could theoretically use Twitter’s retargeting service to then serve the users with a relevant ad on their mobile device.

Currently, the use of third party cookies to target ads on mobile devices is limited as some smartphone operating system providers – notably Apple – restrict their usage.

However, Twitter would be able to bypass this restriction as its users are signed into the service on both desktop and mobile creating a unified identity, meaning it can serve users with relevant ads based on behaviour across devices.