@elonmusk Here’s How To Improve Twitter Ads

If you’ve ever run Twitter Ads then I can almost guarantee that you’ve experienced some sort of frustration with the Ads Platform. Whether you struggled with the wonky ad creation process, were disappointed by limited targeting, or were confused about where to start with their data, I hear you and have been there.

Full disclosure, Twitter is my favorite personal social media site to use and I continue to recommend testing their ads platform when appropriate. However, for years I have thought they could make some key improvements that could lead to a significant impact on the company’s revenue and make it easier for advertisers to justify spending money on the platform.

I’ve been using Twitter and running ads on the platform for about seven years now, and I can tell you firsthand that besides the character count, not much has changed.

I honestly had little hope that it would ever change, until this past week, when the news broke that tech billionaire, Elon Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder and now a sitting member of the board.

Musk has historically been very active on the platform and has not shied away from calling out Twitter’s flaws, which he did one day prior to the purchase with a simple Twitter Poll asking users if there should be an “edit button.” The poll generated almost 4 million votes and in case you are wondering, I’m torn, but ultimately voted “yse” to which 73% of other users agreed.

In addition to focusing on organic Twitter and user experience, I’m hoping Musk and the rest of the Twitter board members take a hard look at their Ads Platform and make much-needed improvements that likely would result in major ad revenue wins and make digital marketers everywhere very happy.

So let’s cut to the chase, @elonmusk, here are my suggestions for Twitter Ads:

(PS – It only feels fitting to make my points into Tweets)

Currently, the Twitter Ads platform only allows advertisers the capability to include target features, however, there is no option to exclude. Twitter Ads targeting by design tends to run broader than other social ads platforms, so adding this feature would allow advertisers to use those categories while excluding those not applicable to their target audience and reduce wasted ad spend.

Not only is it very frustrating that Twitter doesn’t have a radius targeting option, but if they did, it would be a massive competitive advantage over other social platforms such as Reddit and Tik Tok, which currently both only offer DMA targeting.

Facebook is such a powerful advertising platform simply because it offers advertisers the ability to upload and create lookalike audiences on customer data lists. If Twitter could find a way to offer this feature, it would help advertisers reach a more qualified audience, see better results, and ultimately spend more money on the platform.

Twitter analytics are LIMITED and displayed in a clunky way with unclear charts that do too much with comparing month-over-month and organic tweet data. Facebook’s Custom Report option allows advertisers to create a report based on exactly the KPIs they want to see for whatever date range. Additionally, I think Facebook’s “View Chart” section within each campaign can be very efficient at quick health checks of a campaign, a feature that Twitter sorely lacks.

Having the ability to run dynamic ads, including catalog ads, on Twitter would be awesome! Other social sites have developed this feature over the last couple of years (cough cough Pinterest) and have seen major growth results from it.

The ad creation process of creating a promoted post or a media card is harder than it needs to be. I think a really good UX designer could go in and simplify the process, making it easier to create and rotate fresh tweets into your ad campaigns.

Honorable mention:

I can’t write a blog about Twitter without mentioning my general request: Please do not touch the character count. There is beauty in saying less, and it challenges users to get to the point.

Thank you!

Emily Martin