What You Say on Twitter May Soon Determine The Ads You See

Everything you say on Twitter, and everyone you follow on Twitter, may soon become the official source for determining the advertisements you see on certain sites and apps.

This news comes out of The Financial Times, who has sources saying that thanks to Twitter’s recent pending acquisition of ad network MoPub, people you follow or keywords you use could be used to project relatable ads to you on sites that run MoPub ads.

In theory, this would have users seeing ads (based on your Twitter data) on sites that run ads from MoPub. This would allow Twitter to generate revenue far more secretively, and in benefit to you, not have to resort to as many Promoted Tweets to rake in the necessary advertising dough.

In the words of the report from The Financial Times:

“Twitter is planning to mine data on its messaging platform to help sell advertising on other mobile apps or websites…it plans to use data about who users follow and what they tweet about to target ads beyond its own Promoted Tweets, according to people familiar with the plans.”

To provide an example, let’s say you login to Twitter today and publish a tweet along the lines of “When is that new Call of Duty game coming out?” Or, more simply, let’s say you follow the official Call of Duty Twitter account (and somehow don’t know the new game’s release date, but you get the idea). The next MoPub-ad-running website you encounter may pull an ad focused on the next Call of Duty game, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and display it to you.

The same logic can be applied to tweeting about product inquiries or international flights to Europe. So long as there’s an ad for the topic in MoPub’s repository, there’s a chance of you seeing it on a site that runs its ads.

And before you curse Twitter for its seemingly-sneaky ways and invasion of your privacy, let’s remember that sites have been doing this for years now – it’s just now becoming a solidified industry trend. Also, it’s not really a private topic if you’re, you know, tweeting about it.

Have you ever used Google to search for a product, then login to Amazon and see it suggested for purchase on the front page? Because it totally does that, and it’s actually a super helpful shortcut to purchasing a product you’re after.

It’s creepy to some, but effective for most situations – and this, if implemented, would be a smart, systematic way to leverage advertisements through Twitter, but not on it — if that makes sense. You get to keep posting tweets, and more importantly, you get to keep ignoring Promoted Tweets like you always have.

Twitter’s acquisition of MoPub for a whopping $350 million (in both cash and stock) is slated for finalization in Q4 of this year. When that happens, we’ll see just how intricately this new ad system is implemented– if at all.