Twitter rolls out new ad capabilities, changes algorithm ahead of e-commerce services launch

The new capabilities come as Twitter works to expand its performance advertising business, a strategy that promises to generate revenue rapidly and accounted for only 15% of Twitter's income last year.

Twitter announced new ad capabilities on Tuesday and changed the algorithm that determines which advertisements users see as part of an effort to build the basis for future e-commerce services, according to Reuters. The new capabilities come as Twitter works to expand its performance advertising business, a strategy that promises to generate revenue rapidly and accounted for only 15% of Twitter's income last year. The endeavour may aid Twitter in meeting its aim of tripling yearly revenue by 2023.

The San Francisco-based firm is positioning itself to ultimately allow businesses to sell items through the service by first enhancing its ability to deliver relevant advertisements to consumers and raising the probability of clicking on the ad. In an interview, Kamara Benjamin, group product manager at Twitter, stated, "In the end, this will result in consumers using applications, accessing websites, and finding items that fit their requirements."

Ads encouraging downloads for mobile games and other applications, a common form of promotion on social networking sites, will now allow users to begin the download without leaving the Twitter app, according to a blog post published on Tuesday by the business. Users previously had to go to Twitter to download other apps. Twitter also stated that it is working on new technologies that allow companies to run advertisements to locate people more inclined to make in-app purchases.
When consumers click on a slide-show ad featuring various goods, they can now be sent to different websites, when before, companies could only pick one destination.

According to the business, this boosted the amount of clicks on ad campaigns to generate website visits by 25%.

According to Benjamin, Twitter also updated its advertising algorithm, presenting advertisements to a bigger pool of individuals at the start of the campaign to better measure user engagement. According to the firm, the algorithm enhancements resulted in a 36% boost in ad campaigns that had at least five downloads within the time period that the ad appeared on Twitter.