Dive summary:
- For the first time, Twitter will be opening up to third-party data and offering more ad targeting options to brands, following what Facebook has done in the past.
- The data will allow Twitter users to be targeted by websites they have visited and purchases they have made; users will also be targeted by email addresses but they will be presented in a format called "hashing" that scrambles the address and makes them unreadable.
- Unlike Facebook, Twitter will allow users to opt out of ad retargeting by unchecking a box in their account settings.
From the article:
"The retargeting Twitter will enable falls short of a full-fledged ad exchange, which Ad Age has reported is also in the works to rival FBX. Twitter will serve the ads itself and isn't working with a wide set of demand-side platforms or retargeting firms. It does have three ad-tech partners -- Media6Degrees, Adara and Chango -- to help execute the match between browser cookie IDs from website visits and Twitter IDs. (They'll send Twitter the pixel containing the advertiser's data.) Advertisers in this U.S.-only pilot are joint customers who also use those firms for other display retargeting."
