Twitter offers new advertiser tools, plus long-form ‘Notes’

Twitter has today introduced a host of new features for advertisers and users alike – including Twitter Notes, which lets writers of all kinds go longform directly on Twitter for the first time. At Cannes this year, Twitter has also announced advertiser tools including conversion optimisation and branded likes.

Twitter has bolstered its suite of advertiser tools at Cannes this year, announcing a series of new features that both brands and advertisers can leverage to gain better engagement and sales leads from their creative.

Twitter has also established a new team called Twitter Write, who are focused on building tools and community to improve the Twitter experience for writers and readers globally.

Twitter Write has created a composer tool that lets writers create stories and other longform content, called Notes, for its followers to engage with. Notes will give people the ability to go over 280 characters on Twitter in a single piece of content, with the inclusion of photos, videos, GIFs, and Tweets.

Read on for a summary of Twitter’s new host of announcements.

Advertiser tools

• Branded Likes: Branded Likes lets advertisers customise Twitter’s Like button. An advertiser can select a set of hashtags and for 24 hours, any time someone likes a Tweet that includes those hashtags, the Like button turns into a custom animation. After a round of beta testing, Branded Likes will be made available to all advertisers in the US, UK and Japan next week. Advertisers who sit outside of those markets but want to reach people in those regions can also take advantage of Branded Likes.
• Dynamic Product Ads: Last year Twitter introduced greater customisation through Multi-Destination Carousel, a flexible and engaging way to showcase a variety of products through swipeable creative. Twitter has seen an average of 20% increase in click through rate across all objectives compared to a single asset ad format through this format. Multi-Destination Carousel is foundational to plans for launching Dynamic Product Ads later this year, which will allow brands to personalise the creative they show in their ad by featuring the most relevant products to the right user.
• Conversion Optimisation: Will help run campaigns to reach people most likely to take a lower-funnel website action, such as adding to cart, purchasing, or submitting a form.
• Location Spotlight: The Location Spotlight is currently available to all professionals in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Next month Twitter will be making it available to all professionals globally. The Location Spotlight allows businesses to display their location, hours of operation, and additional contact methods like phone, text, email, or DM. Ultimately, the Location Spotlight can help get a customer further down the path to purchase.
• Twitter Business Settings: Twitter Business Settings will be a central hub for Twitter advertisers to manage their accounts, assets, employees, and permissions in a single, secure space.
• App Purchase Optimisation: Currently in pilot, App Purchase Optimisation will help brands deliver app ads to people most likely to make a purchase.

Who can use Twitter Notes

Twitter is currently running a test with a small, select group of writers in the United States, Canada, Ghana and the United Kingdom now have access to Notes as part of the initial testing phase.

Users who are part of the testing phase will get access to a new “Write” tab, which is where they can write and access all of their Notes. These users will also have a new “Notes” tab in their profile that holds their published work to make it easy for their followers to find their long-form content.

For readers in countries where the test will be running, they will be able to see Note cards — Tweets with Note previews and links —in the Home timeline if they’re following someone participating in the Tweet test group for Notes, or if someone they follow Retweets, Quote Tweets, or shares a link to a Note. Readers in some countries will not be able to view Note cards or Notes at this time.

Twitter aims to reach writers with all audience sizes, rather than just journalists or authors with existing large followings. Twitter says “users can also be bloggers, newsletter publishers, comedians, content creators, social media community managers, poets, screenwriters, and anyone else on Twitter who writes, has a profile as an opinion leader or simply has something to say”.

What to expect from Notes on Twitter

Notes will use a rich-text editor to capture articles, thought pieces, and other kinds of content from users’ favourite writers on Twitter. It gives writers of all kinds the chance to go beyond 280 characters for the first time.

Notes will be seen and read by Twitter audiences worldwide, regardless of where the publisher of content is located.

Like tweets, Notes will have their own link and can be tweeted, retweeted, sent in DM’s, liked and bookmarked.

Notes will feature on users’ timeline on iOS, Android, and web starting today. The writers in the test group will also have a Notes tab on their profile on the web.

The new feature could potentially compete with platforms with similar functionalities like Medium, or newsletter-based publishing site Substack.