Why won't Twitter give an "Estimated Audience Size" for a keyword-based paid ad?

[Storitz]

I'm trying to compile metrics for an SEO/SEM plan and am plugging in hypothetical Twitter ad campaigns.  Why won't Twitter give an "Estimated Audience Size" for a keyword-based paid ad?  I can get estimate audience sizes for behaviors but not keywords and hashtags.  Am I doing something wrong?

Also, Twitter won't allow area targeting like Facebook does (90404 +50km)?

Thanks!

[KaneJamison]

Yeah - this is just an issue with the maturity of Twitter's ad dashboard and what they're willing to report I think. Twitter won't even give me an estimate of the number of users in 5 zip codes, or Seattle, or the state of Washington - or the United States.

Additionally, those behaviors seem to be 3rd party data vendors like DLX for auto purchase, and when I enable a behavior and then add location targeting, that does report estimated audience size.

I would grab the Facebook and LinkedIn screenshots - and make a rough estimate that Twitter is 10-25% of Facebook's user numbers based upon total userbase of each (from a quick Google search, this is roughly 1.3 billion Facebook vs 300 million Twitter). This 10-25% estimate is much less useful at a zip code level sadly, since the demographics of that particular zip code will vary dramatically in age and lifestyle.

For the location targeting, you'll need to punch in all of the zip codes - the 50km radius isn't an option.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

No, you're not crazy, and you're not doing anything wrong. Twitter's advertising platform is still younger and somewhat less sophisticated than Facebook or Google. Some metrics such as audience size for keyword targeting are simply missing.

As for geo-targeting, Twitter does provide the following options:

• Country
• State/Providence/Region
• Metro Area
• Postal Code

Which while not as specific as Google Adwords Targeting, does allow you to narrow it down. My advice when working with Twitter is to experiment with smaller groups at first. As with any platform, the learning curve can be fairly steep.

Hope that helps!