RIP Twitter. Hello X
What is X.com and How Will It Impact Advertising?
Ding Ding Ding, the digital boxing match Musk VS Zuck continues this week!
A few days ago, Elon Musk, the owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter, announced through a series of tweets that he would be renaming the platform to “X.”
The CEO of X.com, Linda Yaccarino, later tweeted (xeeting?) explaining what the change meant for the company and its 450 million active users.
It’s not entirely clear what the transformation of X.com will bring, but I would 100% believe you if you told me this was a line from an upcoming I, Robot sequel.
What we can’t look past is that just a few weeks ago, Meta launched their direct Twitter competitor, the Threads app, which gained a staggering 117 million users in its initial weeks. Frankly, I believe this might have made Elon Musk somewhat uneasy, forcing him to make an immediate and major change to Twitter.
As an OG Twitter user, the name change is extremely disheartening, but at the same time, I can’t say we didn’t see this coming since the platform has been unhinged since Musk took over (I miss you, Jack Dorsey).
As a Digital Advertiser, I remain optimistic that Musk and the team might finally initiate much-needed updates to Twitter’s outdated Ad Platform, which lags far behind Meta’s Ad Platform capabilities.
I believe, given the threat of Threads, time is of the essence to fix the Ad Platform, as myself and many other Digital Advertisers are eagerly counting down the days until Threads becomes available as a Meta ad placement.
What Should X Do?
In order for X.com to compete within the digital advertising space against Threads, I think they need to make the following changes to their Ad Platform.
Improve audience targeting by allowing advertisers to exclude specific targeting features
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.
Add a radius location targeting option
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.
Develop lookalike audiences based on a customer list/or user activity
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.
Create the ability for advertisers to upload a shopping feed so we can run dynamic catalog sale ad campaigns
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.
Revamp the entire ad creation experience
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.
Will this get done? Only time will tell. Either way, when Elon Musk and Mark Zuck are at the wheel of the largest social media sites in the world, you know it is never going to be a dull day in the world of digital marketing.
