Calendar Live Enables Twitter Ad Targeting During TV Shows And Events

A new Twitter ad-buying platform aims to take Social TV advertising to the next level. As Adweek and other outlets have reported, TBG Digital’s Calendar Live lets marketers choose TV shows and schedule targeted promoted tweets to run when those shows air. Calendar Live is one of the first tools released that uses the new […]

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A new Twitter ad-buying platform aims to take Social TV advertising to the next level. As Adweek and other outlets have reported, TBG Digital’s Calendar Live lets marketers choose TV shows and schedule targeted promoted tweets to run when those shows air.twitter-march-madness Calendar Live is one of the first tools released that uses the new Twitter ad API, which was launched last month to make it easier to run promoted tweets.

With Calendar Live ad buyers can select TV shows and live events on roughly 35 channels by date and times and then add additional demographic or interest targeting criteria of the second screen users they are trying to reach.

There is a trends module that can be used to target popular or trending topics and hashtags ahead of time. However, the tool also pulls in trending topics in real time to allow marketers to tailor promoted tweets while their selected shows are airing or live events are occurring. TBG Digital found that engagement rates are 18% higher when promoted tweets are scheduled around live events than standard promoted tweets.

As Oreo and a handful of other brands proved during the Super Bowl last year, being able to quickly piggy-back on trending topics and news events as they happen can be branding gold. Now it looks like the stakes will just get higher. “During the Super Bowl, the first blackout ad took four minutes to go live. If they had our system then, they’d see that #blackout was trending and automatically add it to the trend targeting,” TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell to Adweek.

TBG Digital says they are developing other apps built on the Twitter ad API. Other Twitter ad API partners include Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce and SHIFT. The release of the ad API was among the many moves Twitter has made to build on its current dominance in social TV including the acquisition of Bluefin Labs in February and a partnership with Nielsen to measure second screen engagement.

 


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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