Twitter Launches New Targeting Tool for Advertisers

Twitter (News - Alert) has launched a new targeting tool for advertisers. The tool enables ads to be sorted into different categories of interest. After tagging ad under a specific topic, such as "dogs" or "animation," it may crop up among the tweets of users whose activity has indicated an interest in those topics.

In addition, the company is allowing ads known as "promoted tweets" to tether with specific accounts that may have followers likely to have an interest in the subject of a marketing message. The company is now looking at selling more ads as a part of its ongoing bid to capitalize on the popularity of its short-messaging service.

The company initially focused on making its free service as useful as possible to lure more people into sharing their thoughts and moments of their lives in 140 characters. According to eMarketer (News - Alert), Twitter will generate about $260 million this year. This is way below other advertising-dependent Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook (News - Alert).

Now, companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook are also collecting data about their users' interests in an effort to show them ads catering to their interests and preferences.

eMarketer estimated that Twitter's annual revenue is expected to more than double to $540 million in 2014.

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