Twitter has launched an improved website tag process to help advertisers maintain data on ad response, while it’s also announced an upgrade of its App Install campaigns to help developers drive higher engagement.
First off, on its new website tag – with the broader shift away from using third-party cookies for user response tracking, Twitter has re-built its website tag offering to provide first-party data to measure campaign attribution and response.
As explained by Twitter:
“When someone clicks on a website ad, the Twitter Click ID’s unique identifier will be appended automatically in the URL. When the person lands on the website and the Twitter pixel fires, this ID will be captured, sent to Twitter, and used to attribute the site visit to the click.”
So rather than using cookie attribution, which is stored on a users’ device, and tracked by their identifier, Twitter’s new Click ID process is appended within the URL of the referral link. That’s a fairly simple way to get around any restriction due to the loss of cookie tracking – and Twitter says that, thus far, the process has generated good results:
“Based on our tests, we have seen a 10x increase in Site Visits reported in Twitter Ads Manager.”
I mean, that’s obviously going to be case sensitive to some degree, but it will provide another tracking option to help marketers keep tabs on ad performance.
In addition to this, Twitter also says that it’s improved its conversion optimization modeling, with its process now better at identifying people who are more likely to visit your website. It’s also made improvements to its Website Card format – “including better navigation to a full-screen browser, reduced loading time for websites, and improved usability of media controls”.
For App Install campaigns, Twitter says that it’s rebuilt its App Installs objective to provide more control and management options for marketers.
“As part of this rebuild, we redesigned several of our most popular formats to drive higher engagement, increased mobile app impressions by 80%, improved prediction and measurement, and developed a faster and more intuitive campaign creation experience.”
Twitter says that it’s improved its App Cards, adding more context and information (including app ratings, app price, and download details), while it’s also improved its prediction, bid optimization, supply and supply quality systems to help maximize campaign performance.
“We also upgraded our infrastructure and how our ad serving works within the Twitter timeline, which has resulted in a significant number of impressions that App Install advertisers are now winning in our auction.”
In addition to this, Twitter has also implemented new measurement solutions to help advertisers more accurately attribute installs “and navigate iOS 14’s upcoming app tracking transparency framework”.
Twitter recently provided an overview of how advertisers can prepare for Apple’s coming IDFA update, which is expected to significantly reduce the amount of response data available to advertisers over time.
There’s no way to know exactly how signficant the changes in cookie tracking and the coming IDFA update will be, but with these changes, Twitter’s looking to provide alternative data solutions for advertisers, which will enable them to keep tracking relevant response data to mitigate any losses.
We’ll have to wait and see how much they’ll be needed, and how well they work for each business.
