Brands Can Better Target Fans With TV Ad Targeting On Twitter

To help marketers coordinate their Twitter and their television advertising strategies, Twitter has announced the availability of TV ad targeting: a new feature which helps brands to better target potential customers by intelligently monitoring the airtimes of commercials, while simultaneously tracking relevant conversation on Twitter.

Last week was a busy one for Twitter, who announced a number of new features to help marketers better target fans across multiple screens by coordinating TV and Twitter advertising: with Twitter Amplify, marketers can partner up with broadcasters to display commercials prior to media content embedded in tweets, while the lead generation card allows brands to advertise offers which users can apply to without having to leave the site.

Both Twitter Amplify and TV ad targeting allow brands to coordinate their message across multiple screens in real-time. By including hashtags in TV commercials between the instalments of popular shows, brands can ensure that they are part of the conversation on Twitter. In fact, 64% of US Twitter mobile users are active on Twitter while they watch TV, a statistic Twitter’s Michael Fleischman is quick to acknowledge in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog. In the post, Fleischman also explains how TV ad targeting on Twitter works:

TV ad targeting works by using video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring that advertiser to do any manual tracking or upload media plan details. Whenever a commercial airs during a TV show, Twitter not only determines where and when it ran, but can identify users on Twitter who tweeted about the program where the ad aired during that program. We believe a user who engaged enough with a TV show to tweet about it very likely saw the commercials as well. 

Twitter is providing marketers with a new TV ads dashboard, so that they can monitor and react to the targeting data Twitter’s video fingerprinting technology produces. From this dashboard, marketers can work out when best to send out promoted tweets and trends in order to get the most engagement on Twitter.


TV ad targeting is the result of Twitter’s acquisition of Bluefin Labs, a television/social media analytics company, which occurred in February – in fact, before becoming a Twitter product manager and authoring the announcement post, Michael Fleischman was one of Bluefin’s co-founders.

TV ad targeting is currently only available in a limited beta to United States-based companies running national TV ad campaigns, but Twitter advises that if a company wants more information, they should contact their account manager.

Do you think brands will benefit from TV ad targeting?      

Twitter Introduces Two-Step Authentication

Twitter has finally introduced two-factor authentication to more securely protect accounts, the company announced Wednesday.

The move comes after a number of hacks of high-profile Twitter accounts, including The Onion, the Associated Press and E! Online.

Jim O'Leary from Twitter's product security team announced the new feature via a blog post, saying it is in response to accounts "occasionally" being compromised by phishing schemes or password breaches on other sites.

The move will likely be of most interest to major brands with a presence on the site as a part of an effort to ward of hackers. By implementing the feature, it will make it more difficult to gain control of an account.
Twitter is calling the new feature "login verification." It works similarly to other two-factor authentication systems, especially Google's feature: After the account holder logs into an account, Twitter will send a special code to the user via SMS text message that the person must enter to gain access to the account.
The second step is required every time the user logs out and logs back in, a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable.

Users can enable login verification via their Twitter settings page. You'll need both a confirmed email address and a verified phone number on your account to use the feature, and the system will send a test message to finish the activation.

Importantly, apps that you've linked to Twitter will continue to work "without disruption," O'Leary wrote. For apps other than a browser that require you to log into Twitter, you'll need a one-time password, available on Twitter's application page (this is also similar to how Google two-factor authentication works).
Twitter built login verification out of its Twitter for SMS feature, which was actually what the service was initially based on when it debuted in 2006. O'Leary says the work the company put into login verification will enable more security enhancements in the future.

Calls for Twitter to introduce some kind of two-step verification service grew louder after account hacks became a frequent occurrence. Besides the companies mentioned earlier, the BBC, the Financial Times, Burger King and Donald Trump have all experienced Twitter hacks in recent months.

Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff wrote in April that the time had come for the feature to arrive on the service, and he recommended Twitter make it a requirement for verified accounts.

What's your take on Twitter's two-step verification? Will you use it? Let us know in the comments.

Google Intros Stand-Alone Hangouts App

Google announced a major upgrade to its Hangouts real-time communication service, rolling out a new stand-alone Hangouts app for the web, Android and iOS that will be available later Wednesday.

The app was introduced by Vic Gundotra, senior VP of engineering, at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. He emphasized Google's intention of "getting gadgets out of the way," and giving people the ability to contact their friends, colleagues and loved ones on any platform, regardless of operating system.

"Why should OSes matter?," asked Gundotra. "People matter." He emphasized that the new Hangouts app will focus on conversations, rather than contacts. He added that contacts are still available with a single tap, and they'll be ranked by Google according to how often you talk to or chat with those contacts.

The conversations can include combinations of text, photos and video. All can be stored, so you can go back in time and relive any of these conversations. If you'd rather not have them saved for posterity, history can be turned off, and conversations easily deleted.

If you add photos to a conversation, the app can automatically save them into albums.
As people join the conversation, their profile icons appear at the bottom of the screen, animating into view. The app also allows you to see how far in the conversation someone has read. "It really feels like you're in the same room together. We think that's delightful," Gundotra said.

He added that the app will synchronize all of your conversations, no matter on which operating system they originated. There's also the ability for a text conversation to be turned into a group video chat with a single tap of a video icon.

Screenshots courtesy Google, Mashable composite

Twitter Acquires Data Analysis Startup Lucky Sort

Twitter has acquired Lucky Sort, a startup that specializes in data visualization, the two companies announced Monday. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lucky Sort was founded two years ago and launched its first product called TopicWatch last February. TopicWatch let users analyze real-time trends on social media (including Twitter) as well as from other news sources. As part of the acquisition, Lucky Sort will shut down its services in the coming months.

"Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize by building elegant and user friendly tools for text analysis," Noah Pepper, CEO of Lucky Sort, wrote in a blog post. Today I’m very excited to announce that our journey has entered a new phase: Lucky Sort has been acquired by Twitter!" Twitter confirmed the acquisition in a tweet.

The startup will move to San Francisco where it will join Twitter's revenue engineering department.
Twitter has acquired multiple startups in the data space in recent months, including the scalable computing company Ubalo and the social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs.

Mashable composite. Images via Twitter, Lucky Sort

What To Expect From Facebook Video Ads

Facebook is set to release video advertising into the news feed this July, says The Financial Times in a recent article detailing the expected financial benefits the service will have for the social media giants.

The new video adverts will autoplay in a user’s news feed without sound, giving the user the option to restart the video with sound. The ads can run for a maximum of 15 seconds but, to increase brand exposure, Facebook will ensure that users see advertising from only one brand on any given day. Naturally, there are concerns that the ads may be too disruptive, leading to decreased user activity on Facebook.

To test its effect on active user figures the service will first go through an extensive testing phase, with Facebook’s key advertisers – American Express, Coca Cola, Ford, Nestlé and Unilever to name a few – taking part in the trials period. There is no indication as to whether or not certain ads will be targeted at specific users, but this could be down to the small number of brands involved in the testing phase. If the trials prove successful and more brands are persuaded to use the service, there may be more opportunity for targeting.

To persuade more brands to use the feature, Facebook are charging them slightly less than the amount they would pay for TV advertising. Facebook video ads will reportedly cost somewhere in the “low $20s” per thousand video views, even when audio has not been activated.

Facebook, Yahoo and AOL have all been pitching their advertising services to agencies in the past month in order to get a slice of the $64.5 billion US TV ads market. As a result, eMarketer expects revenue from digital video ads to increase by 41.4% between 2012 and 2013, reaching $4.1 billion – which is still only a small percentage of the TV ads market overall.

Facebook video ads are expected to raise around $1.5 million a day for Facebook, but this could increase to $4m a day by the end of the year according to Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt.

Do you think Facebook video ads will be a success? Or will they prove to be too disruptive?