Starting next week, Twitter will allow advertisers to target users that have completed an action that started on Twitter.
The announcement was made earlier this month, but finalization of the system has been taking some time. Essentially, this is going to allow remarketing advertising to twitter users based on their clicks, cookies, and usage history on the social media platform.
Like most other social media ad platforms, personal data is going to be encrypted by a system called hashing. Basically, the names, email addresses, phone numbers, purchase history, and usage histories that are created by an aggregate of multiple data sources is compiled in a PCI compliant environment, and then delivered to Twitter. What this means for those that are privacy conscious, is that all of their data is going to be protected in a very secure environment, and when it is delivered to Twitter for Promoted Tweets, the data is completely encrypted.
The opportunity for advertisers is massive. The data that Twitter is purchasing is similar to that of Facebook and other major social advertisers. This means that it is possible that a Promoted Tweet using what is now being called “Promoted Content” can be based on the same purchase data that Facebook is using to serve these ads.
Something that is unique about the service is the opportunity to opt out of this type of promoted content. As stated in their blog post on the matter “While we want to make our ads more useful, we also want to give users simple and meaningful privacy options. Simply uncheck the box next to “Promoted content” in your account settings, and Twitter will not match your account to information shared by our ad partners for tailoring ads. This is the only place you’ll need to disable this feature on Twitter.“
Furthermore, since Twitter is a staunch supporter of the “Do Not Track” (DNT) Internet protocol, browser cookies and history will not be accessed for those who have that feature enabled on their browsers.
Comparatively, Facebook does not allow users to opt out of this type of content delivery system, and does not respect the more common DNT plugins that are installed on most browsers. Many believe that this is an attempt to differentiate Twitter from the advertising platforms of other social media sites; and gain larger acceptance from its users.
One small point of concern for us at RumbleLink is under the updated terms and conditions for Twitter that state: “We may share or disclose your non-private, aggregated or otherwise non-personal information, such as your public user profile information, public Tweets, the people you follow or that follow you, or the number of users who clicked on a particular link (even if only one did).”
The main issue here is the idea of being able to share “aggregated data”, which is being purchased from third party big data sources such as Media6Degrees, Adara, and Chango. Since the language is ambiguous in these terms, it may still be possible to advertise to a user with what they may still consider “private data” if that data was purchased and delivered as a hashed dataset.
For example, Amazon.com is famous for keeping meticulous purchase records of their users, and that data is sold to other firms. If a user on twitter, using a hashtag related to flowers sees an ad about flowers based on their Amazon purchase data, is that not private data?
Regardless of the execution, which can only be speculated on at this point, we at RumbleLink love the idea of a social media service taking care of their user. Every system has limitations, and as long as a company seeks to protect their own whilst giving companies an opportunity to play within the boundaries of privacy to make a living, we will always support it.
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