Twitter is giving advertisers a new way to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
The company is making this data available through what it’s calling conversion lift reports. Those reports are supposed to measure whether Twitter ads actually lead to an improvement in whatever business metric you’re focused on, whether it’s website clicks/signups, mobile app installs and re-engagement, or switching mobile carriers. (That last one’s, uh, pretty specific.)
In a blog post, the company writes:
As all performance marketers know, understanding the incremental contribution of the clicks and views on your ad campaign is critical — particularly when you’re running mobile or cross-device campaigns. Last-click attribution is an inaccurate reflection of what’s driving results, because the average customer switches between multiple devices, platforms, and sites before making a purchase.
The company already offers conversion tracking for advertisers, but these new reports go further, with custom data across devices and specific recommendations on how to make your ads more effective.
To achieve this, Twitter says it compares a group of users that has seen your ad with a group that hasn’t, allowing it to calculate whether the ad is actually delivering improved conversions. These reports are probably aimed at larger advertisers — the company is making them available to all managed clients (as opposed to smaller businesses to buy Twitter Ads through its self-serve options).
In early tests, the company says that users who saw a Promoted Tweet were 1.4 times as likely to convert on the advertiser’s website, while those who engaged with a tweet were 3.2 times as likely.
Facebook has also been rolling out new features to measure conversion lift and optimize ads based on that data.