Advertisers Can Now Read All Your Tweets And Target You Based On Them

Twitter users are used to seeing "Promoted Tweets" and "Promoted Trends" popping up on their dashboards.

But they might be surprised in the coming months as those promoted tweets will now show up in response to whatever you've just tweeted, courtesy of Twitter's new "keyword targeting in timelines" product.

Put simply, advertisers can buy ads against any words or phrases they like, and whenever those terms show up on Twitter — boom! — the user gets an ad in response. In the business, it's called "intent retargeting" because the aim is to figure out what your shopping intent might be and reach you with an ad right at that time.

Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital (a Twitter ad buyer) is excited about it. He says:

So a tweet saying, “I’m so hungry”, could see a location based McDonalds ad. Or tweet, ‘I’ve got nothing to wear!’ and see an H&M sale ad. Tweet “I’m really tired” and see a Starbucks voucher ad – the possibilities are endless.

Here's a look at TBG's Twitter keyword buying dashboard, set up as if it were buying for McDonald's (click to enlarge):