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Boosting the Effectiveness of Your Ads with Twitter’s Ad Transparency Tools
The pairing of social media and politics is anything but new, but the former has mostly been where people go to stay connected, updated, and entertained. Over the last few years, social media has become increasingly political. Surveys indicate social media has done little to change people’s stand on political issues—in fact, most users do not like talking about politics at all—but this has not stopped politicians from increasing their investments in the platform. Twitter Responds to the Call for Transparency Following questions about the magnitude of social media’s sway over public opinion during the 2016 US Presidential elections, Twitter enacted stricter advertising policies and augmented the transparency of ads in their platform. Even non-Twitter users will be able to check for advertisers and the ad campaigns that they ran over the last seven days. In particular, the Transparency Center will display: All ads the account being searched for had run, including Promoted-Only ads The duration of the ads Ad creative associated with the campaign Ads that are targeted to you, as well as which ads you may receive based on targeting The Transparency Center also includes a special section on electioneering ads, showing: All ads from the account, including Promoted-Only ads The total amount spent by the advertiser on the campaign The organization that funded the campaign The demographics being targeted, including geography, gender, and age Historical data about the advertiser’s spending on electioneering ads The new policies change the way advertisers do social media ads, although they do have a greater impact on political advertising. As a business owner or advertiser, there are numerous ways for you to adapt to these changes and make them work for your brand’s advantage. A Look at Twitter Ad Transparency As mentioned Take a look at the site here above, searching for an account in Twitter’s Transparency Center lets you see all the ads, as well as the creative for said ads, it has run within the last seven days. If an ad is taken down because of reports from users, it will be preserved in the Transparency Center for about 24 hours. Deleted posts and tweets from suspended and deleted accounts will not be visible. Source: https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/company/2018/atc/ATCScroll1.gif Political ads are a different matter. In accordance with Twitter’s Political Campaigning Policy, the social network will show pertinent details, such as the demographic data used to target users, billing information, ad spend, and impression data per tweet. Source: https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/company/2018/atc/ATC_PoliticalAccount_new.gif Twitter also makes it clear who is publishing and paying for the ads, as well as whether or not the ads were authorized by a candidate. These are visible through a visual badge and disclaimer information from certified accounts on promoted ads. Source: https://blog.twitter.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/company/2018/atc/ATC_PoliticalTweet.gif A Move in Favor of Trust Twitter’s move toward transparency was seen as a way to minimize the impact of issues like those that occurred following the 2016 elections. But for brands and business owners, this could be an opportunity to build and regain trust from their respective communities. This is all the more relevant nowadays, what with more and more customers trusting brands less and less.
