Twitter launches TV conversation targeting for advertisers to zone in on chatter around TV shows

Twitter and TV go hand-in-hand — this is an idea that the social networking giant is placing great emphasis on now.

Twitter announced today a new feature called TV conversation targeting that is landing first in the US and the UK. This comes after it launched TV ad targeting in July for marketers to continue their TV advertising on Twitter — by engaging users with a Promoted Tweet after they have been exposed to these ads on the TV shows they were watching.

TV conversation targeting broadens the scope of TV ad targeting. It lets networks and brands promote tweets to users who engage with specific shows, regardless of whether they ran an advertising spot on the TV program.

This means it’s now cheaper for advertisers to target viewers of a TV show that they think may have some synergy with their brand — as they head to Twitter to target those who are talking about the show, instead of having to fork out huge amounts of money for a TV ad.

Over the next few weeks, Twitter will bring TV conversation targeting to advertisers in Brazil, Canada, France and Spain, with more countries to follow.

As Twitter recently became a publicly-listed company, TV is a medium that is vitally important to the company and its appeal to advertisers and, in turn, investors. In October, Nielsen released its Twitter TV ratings, showing that there has been a 38 percent increase in tweets about TV in the US over the last year. In August, a new study from Nielsen concluded that tweets can cause a “significant increase” in viewership of broadcast TV programs 29 percent of the time.

Headline image via Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images