Arena

Twitter Ads

Paid Social Media

While Twitter previously had an extremely broad and restrictive political ad policy, the door is wide open for political advertisers now that we’ve entered the Elon Musk era of the platform.

The platform is currently plagued with uncertainty around major features like verification and routinely has major bugs arise, but it hasn’t completely imploded as many had predicted, and people are still tweeting away.

Political advertisers have already started to take advantage of the platform, primarily to reach politically engaged users with fundraising CTAs. Still, generally speaking, advertisers can use Twitter Ads to put tweets in front of users outside their organic following through a number of objectives, including awareness, tweet engagement, video views, followers, website clicks, and conversions.

Skill Level Needed to Buy Ads

Some Expertise Required

Typically Managed By

Communications & Digital Staff, Ad Agencies

Resources

Who Is It For

Cause-based advertisers who maintain active Twitter accounts or are working with issues that might appeal to a wonky, moderately to a highly politically engaged audience

Use Cases

A campaign with a small digital budget might use Twitter to increase the reach on some of their organic posts with a larger audience.
A campaign with a mid-sized digital budget might use Twitter to show crafted messages to journalists, lawmakers, and other influencers on their topic.
A campaign with a large digital budget might use Twitter to solicit donations from a highly informed audience.

Strengths

Ad engagements can increase your reach organically more than other platforms
Effectively reaching influencers in their native environment where they’ll be in the right frame of mind to engage with your message

Drawbacks

Low credit limits for new ad accounts (To prevent interruptions, contact their support team to raise it manually if you plan on a high spending volume from the start.)
Unintuitive advertising platform and limited targeting options
Anecdotally, advertising customer support seems to have been diminished after rounds of Twitter layoffs
Twitter leadership is chaotic and can make major changes at the drop of a hat

US Political Ad Policies

Twitter defines political content as “content that references a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, ballot measure, legislation, regulation, directive, or judicial outcome.” Advertisers who are running ads that fall under this definition are permitted but are prohibited from running anything false or misleading and must comply with any laws regarding disclosure and content requirements.

In order to run any political ads, advertisers must be based in the US and must go through a certification process by filling out a form. The expected turnaround time for a response to the certification application is 2-4 weeks.

There are a couple of additional restrictions for approved advertisers: first, ads will only be eligible to run on desktop and iOS devices, but they anticipate enabling political advertising on Android and other devices in the near future; second, political advertisers can only use location, age, gender, and interest/keyword targeting tactics in their campaigns; finally, political advertisers can only run promoted ads and follower ads and are prohibited from the other Twitter ad units.

Twitter does keep a Political Ad Library, but it’s not readily available to the public; in order to access it, you have to submit a form requesting information on a specific political ad or advertiser.

Common Goals

Acquisition, including both fundraising and list building
Awareness
Mobilization

Available Creative Formats

Videos (6s, 15s, 30s, 60s, 60s+)
Static Graphics
Gifs
News Articles

Average Costs

Typical pricing model: CPM

$10-15+ CPM

Notable Targeting Capablities

Geotargeting
Behavioral targeting

*For cause-based advertisers, geotargeting “may only happen at the state, province, or region level and above” (no ZIP targeting). Behavioral targeting (keywords that users have searched for or interests) “may not include terms associated with political content, prohibited advertisers, or political leanings or affiliations.” There are other targeting options available for the platform for advertisers who aren’t under their cause-based advertiser policy.

The Digital Ads Playbook is produced by ACRONYM+ and powered by Arena.

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Paid for by Arena Summit, a section 501(c)(4) organization, and Arena PAC.

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Arena

Arena

Twitter Ads

Skill Level Needed to Buy Ads

Typically Managed By

Resources

Who Is It For

Use Cases

Strengths

Drawbacks

US Political Ad Policies

Common Goals

Available Creative Formats

Average Costs

Notable Targeting Capablities

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