Twitter Conducts Geotargeting Test

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Twitter is running its first test of ad geotargeting, an important evolution of its year-old "Promoted Products" marketing platform. If adopted widely, the capability could clear the way for small and mid-sized advertisers to promote themselves on Twitter via paid placements, and for national advertisers to customize ad messaging by region.

The test applies to Twitter's Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets ad products, but not to its most visible Promoted Trends ads. Trial advertisers will be able to target Promoted Accounts ads by country while Promoted Tweets can be more granular -supporting either country or metro area delivery in the U.S. The company would not disclose specific advertisers in the test, nor would it say how many users or advertisers were involved.

Twitter said in a statement, "We continuously launch features to enhance the advertising experience on Twitter. As with all of our advertising efforts, we are watching this test closely and will use feedback from advertisers and Twitter users to fine-tune and iterate on the feature."

The absence of geotargeting has for many months been a glaring omission from Twitter's ad menu. Buyers of its Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts ads are granted some interest-level targeting, but Promoted Trends advertisers can only run global ad placements. These reach all Twitter.com visitors and range in price from $70,000 to $120,000. The fact that Promoted Trends is excluded from the current geotargeting ad test suggests Twitter is holding that placement in reserve for large national and global advertisers.

AllThingsD first reported the news.