Twitter has announced the cumbersomely named Installed App Category Targeting as well as new and improved tracking. The new tool will allow advertisers to target people based on what apps they have installed on their phone, in addition to standard things like age and gender.
Although I think the best example of how this can be used is to target people that play certain types of games, like targeting people who play Words With Friends with other word games, the example Twitter used was of attempting to target people who have productivity apps installed with financial apps.
You don’t appear to get to see what exact apps users have installed, just the category they fall into. Twitter has also stated that it is not tracking what takes place in apps, only that they are installed on someone’s device, so this may be the extent of the options that advertisers are offered with this tool. That’s a bit of a disappointment because I’d bet that game app developers would love to be able to target those who’ve made in app purchases.
Along with Installed App Category Targeting, the platform has also said that they’re offering better ways to track app trends.
[I]f you’re running a campaign targeting users who have installed entertainment apps, you can use this reporting to identify other types of apps they also have installed — and then explicitly target those new categories. Or, you can identify which app categories yield the strongest install rates and lowest cost per install, and use this data to target high performing app categories in future campaigns.
