3 Reasons Why Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Must Improve

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ad platform has gone live, and several major corporations, like Starbucks and Sony Pictures have dived straight in to test its effectiveness.

Promoted Tweets, since it first came into the scene, has promised much to both businesses and users.

Users will, for a start, be exposed only to relevant Promoted Tweets (a.k.a ads) and  ads in Twitter’s search results. Also, Promoted Tweets that don’t perform well under Twitter’s resonance metrics will be automatically removed.

Businesses, on the other hand, can promote not only to their own followers, but also to the entire Twitterverse. The resonance metrics also help businesses monitor and enhance their ads in order to resonate better with Twitter users, thus generating better ad performance.

Despite the advantages listed, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets platform, as far as I believe, needs to offer more to attract businesses.

1. Not Targeting The Right Audience

Targeting the entire Twitterverse isn’t attractive to all. Promoted Tweets, for now, is unable to target an audience from a specific geographic or demographic group. Advertisers wouldn’t want to spend on an audience that’s not potential buyers.

2. Not Targeting Through Search Terms

Targeting based on related keywords would also provide businesses with a more relevant audience for their ads. But Twitter obviously hasn’t implemented it.

I made a quick check on the keyword “coffee” and surprisingly, Starbucks’s ad didn’t appear even though I’m following its tweets (it’s supposedly relevant ads to me). This makes me wonder why Twitter bothers to place ads through search results when ads aren’t relevant to search terms.