Twitter has revealed plans to trial an ad tailoring scheme that allows advertisers to use their own customer databases to view ‘promoted tweet’ ads, targeting people who are interested in their products or services.
The move marks the microblogging site’s entry into the controversial "retargeting" business, following Facebook and Google.
According to reports, if the pilot goes well, the scheme would boost Twitter’s advertising rates without increasing the number of ads being shown to a user.
Twitter revenue products senior director Kevin Weil said: "Users won’t see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones."
The scheme would allow advertisers to share jumbled email addresses or browser-based cookies with the microblogging site to retarget and direct promoted tweets to users who earlier visited their site or opted a newsletter.
"This is how most other companies handle this practice, and we don’t give advertisers any additional user information," Weil said.
In August 2012, Twitter originally introduced ads targeted to users’ stated interests, based on who they follow or their tweets.
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According to Twitter, retargeting would boost an advertiser’s return on investment as ads would target those who are already intending to buy from that advertiser.
Analyst group eMarketer anticipates Twitter to generate $582m (£386m) in advertising revenues in 2013, which is twice the revenues generated in 2012 and would reach almost $1bn in 2014.
