Twitter Adds Geo-Targeting to Promoted Products, Yahoo! Rolls Out Search Direct

March 28, 2011 | by | Category:

This week in our blogosphere recap we’ll review four blog posts from last week that discuss how Twitter and Facebook have further advanced their ad targeting, Yahoo’s new Google Instant-like search features and more! Below are some of the highlights from these articles:

Twitter Conducts Geotargeting Test

ClickZ | Zachary Rodgers | 3-24-11

One year after the launch of Twitter’s Promoted Products, ad geo-targeting has arrived for the microblogging services’ beta advertisers. To start, Twitter’s testing this newly available geo-targeted advertising through Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets, but as the article points out, it isn’t offering this for Promoted Trends. Promoted Accounts allows for targeting by country, whereas Promoted Tweets provides deeper targeting options, including targeting by country or “metro area delivery in the U.S.”

Additional Information:

  • The article suggests that Twitter’s purposeful omission of Promoted Trends from their initial geo-targeted ad testing could be because the company’s planning to provide that service specially for large domestic and international advertisers.

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Facebook Tests Real-Time Ad Targeting

All Facebook | Jackie Cohen | 3-23-11

Facebook has begun generating real time targeted ads for 1% of their user base as part of an initial testing period. The ads are based on users’ “real-time comments” and basically forms keywords from those updates, says Cohen. With the ongoing debate around ad-targeting, the blogger points out that users might see this type of targeting as even more intrusive, or, on the other hand, the ads might see a higher click-through-rate and better performance than other targeted ads.

Main Takeaways:

  • Facebook has begun experimenting with real time ad targeting among a small population of their users.
  • The targeted ads are based on real time comments from users, creating keywords from those shared updates.

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Yahoo Search Direct Launched for Instant Results

WebProNews | Chris Crum | 3-23-11

Last week Yahoo! rolled out what some are calling the search engine’s own version of Google Instant–it’s known as “Search Direct.” With Search Direct, users automatically see a list of the top trending searches in the drop-down menu of the search query box before they even start typing. Then, as the user types, a list of 10 predicted search queries simultaneously auto-populate in the drop-down. From directly within the search box (without even scrolling down to organic results), users can click through on interactive content like maps, news results, weather updates and shopping results.

Additional Information:

  • Yahoo! launched the beta version of Search Direct in the U.S. last week. Click here to try it for yourself.

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Bing News Adds Tweets To News Results

Search Engine Land | Barry Schwartz | 3-23-11

Bing has just rolled out a new social feature on Bing News–a real time stream of tweets relating to a user’s search query. The tweets show up in a sidebar on the right-hand side of the search results page, under the header: “Public updates.” Users have the option to pause the tweet stream and also click through on any given tweet to that user’s Twitter account. Additionally, users can click on the “More updates” option below the Twitter stream to see all real time updates for that search query on Bing’s Social Search.

Main Takeaways:

  • Bing has just launched a new social option on Bing News that provides users with a Twitter stream of the latest updates related to their search term.

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