5 things I wish I knew about Twitter Ads before using the platform
I’ve heard stories that suggest our ancestors once lived in a world where they woke up and DIDN’T see tweets from Donald Trump hitting someone with a golf ball and/or calling something “SAD!” I have some bad news for those of you wistfully longing for these days…
It’s unlikely that Twitter will be going anywhere, for better or for worse. There are 1.3 billion registered users currently on Twitter with 157 million active daily users (click here for other cool Twitter stats).
So you may be asking…how do we reach these millions of people?
Great question. The answer is by getting these users content via Twitter’s internal ad platform with the extremely original name…“Twitter Ads.”
The issue though, is there are many different intricacies and inconsistencies with Twitter ads that are…shall we say…less than intuitive.
Here are five things you need to know about Twitter ads before using the platform.
1. Sometimes ads don’t run
Very often, ads will get stuck in a Twitter purgatory of sorts. Twitter recommends that you create ads 48 hours before they are scheduled to go live. This is a little bit of a CYA on their part, as I’ve had multiple campaigns take over 24 hours for them to approve the tweets we want to get to larger audiences.
Solution:
Since it’s completely irrational to expect people to schedule their tweets 48 hours in advance, especially when capitalizing off breaking news, this creates a big hurdle (*cough* one that Twitter should probably be fixing *cough*).
There is a tactic I use that is, shall we say, Bush League. That said…it works. I recreate the tweets that are stuck in purgatory and add them to the same campaign that we were looking to run but got held up. Usually I will do this a couple of hours after our promotions begin if the tweets aren’t approved. It’s as simple as copying the text from the tweet which is being held up, tweeting it again, and deleting the tweet which is stuck.
2. Beware of your credit limit
The Twitter Ads platform creates a credit limit for each account that starts at $500. The more you spend on the platform, and the longer you are on it, the higher your credit limit is.
Curious about when they charge your credit card and when that limit hits it’s ceiling? Me too.
It’s unpredictable, and if you hit the credit limit on the weekend, the odds of you being able to continue promoting your tweets get pretty close to zero.
Solution:
Before running a large campaign, reach out to Twitter ads and ask them to increase your credit limit. This will give you the ability to spend your full budget as opposed to sitting there hitting refresh over the course of a weekend.
Trust me. I’ve had to do it. Don’t be like old me. Be like new me.
3. That promoted tweet you never put a spend behind can still be seen
A few months ago, we worked with a television show that was making a huge announcement. The announcement had been planned for some time, and we were going live with the news on a Friday. On Wednesday, we drafted up the tweets we were going to promote, tagging the anchor, but we didn’t hit publish, even though they were PROMOTED ONLY tweets.
Why?
Because, even though these tweets are meant to only be seen by individuals who you are targeting with your tweets, they are also visible to anyone you tag in the tweet as soon as you click “publish”.
Solution:
Schedule your tweets. It can be a pain, and you may have to go back at the last minute and delete them / make changes, but scheduling is the only way around this. Unfortunately there isn’t a “mock up” version of a tweet where you can send the URL and be sure nobody sees it unless they have the URL (although that would be a great idea Twitter…)
4. Create custom audiences as often as possible…but create them big
Twitter’s ad platform has a large number of minuses, including wonky structure, a lack of support, and a lack of consumer data that is available through platforms like Facebook. One of their pluses, however is their ability to allow you to tailor an audience you advertise to without having email addresses. Via the audience manager, you can figure out who you want to target, then make sure the tweets are delivered only to those individuals (or a lookalike of those people). But be careful…that list of 100k Twitter accounts you uploaded only gave you 30,000 people matched to Twitter. What should you do now?
Solution:
A general rule of thumb we take when creating custom audiences on Twitter is to always expect only about 1/3 to actually match up to Twitter’s audience manager. Even if we find the handles or user ids that day and import them in to the platform, Twitter will rarely add more than ½ of individuals into this audience. Plan for this, and always triple the audience size you are going after. If you are looking for individuals with at least 500 followers who follow Taylor Swift, then not only should you expect to find me in that audience, but you should consider decreasing the criteria to 400 followers to make sure you deliver to number of people you had planned.
But be careful. That lookalike box is always pre-checked when selecting a tailored audience in the ads manager. This may be good, but if you only want it delivered to the custom audience, make sure you uncheck that box.
5. Ads support is pretty much only available from 9–5 on M-F
Well…they don’t really hide it.
There’s not really much of an explanation needed here, nor is there an easy solution. Don’t have any of the above issues in the evening or on the weekends I guess?
Hopefully we’ve helped add a couple of tools to your arsenal as you begin the grueling process that is promoting content on Twitter. Godspeed.
If you are interested in advertising on Twitter, we are happy to help. Send me an email at Nathan_adams@dkcnews.com.
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