Twitter has just announced a range of new ‘interest targeting’ options for promoted tweets and accounts, giving brands the ability to deliver targeted advertisements.

How interest targeting works

Interest targeting allows brands to select from 350 categories such as animation, cartoons and education. These tweets will then be displayed to users with similar likes.

Alternatively, interest-based ads can be more specific, where @usernames can be used to target the followers of a particular Twitter account.

This means advertisements will be displayed to users who have similar interests to the targeted account’s followers.

Stay on target

So far, the results of interest targeting have been impressive. Twitter’s product management director Kevin Weil announced on the company’s blog that advertisers in the current beta test have already seen increases in audience reach.

“Across the board, [brands] are seeing high engagement rates because they are reaching users who are interested in their content.”

Catching up with the Jones'

While Facebook and Google have been offering targeted advertising for some time, this latest update will bring Twitter's advertising offering closer to its social network rivals.

Currently no date has been set for the Australian roll out of interest targeting, though Twitter has announced it expects to launch the service locally over the coming months.