Little Twitter is growing up, today announcing it will offer an advertising API for its Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products, a development allowing marketers to buy and optimize Twitter ads alongside their other media buying. The company has been testing the system for the last month or so, with beta partners Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, TBG Digital and SHIFT.

“With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale,” wrote April Underwood, Twitter’s product manager for revenue, in a blog post.

Advertisers placing ads on Twitter via the API will be able to set budgets and schedules, as well as target by location, interest groups, device types and other demographic information.

Here’s what the interface looks like on HootSuite:

Adobe says it has been testing the API using its own accounts, as well as those of clients Threadless and Levi Strauss & Co. With its own account for Adobe Marketing Cloud, it used Promoted Accounts to increase the follower base by 63%, while decreasing the cost-per-follow by 60%, bringing it down to around $2.00.

In a press release, TBG Digital touted the API’s ability to let brands more easily capitalize on the second-screen phenomenon, since Twitter so often accompanies live television watching. “People are watching television and reading tweets at the same time – so the best results come from campaigns created with technology that can harvest, manage and respond to information about those reactions efficiently,” said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG.

To expand beyond the original five beta partners, Twitter plans to expand the Twitter Certified Products Program so that ad tools can receive certification.

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News | Twitter: Advertising | Twitter: User Interface

About The Author: Pamela Parker is executive features editor of Marketing Land and a contributing editor for Search Engine Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. See more articles by Pamela Parker

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