Twitter Shows The Way Forward With Do Not Track
Twitter today announced a new way of targeting advertisements for its users, including a partnership with three online tracking firms: media6degrees (m6d), Chango, and Adara. This new system will display ads based on your behavior and reading habits …
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter's advertising strategy had moved from its 2010 warning to ad rivals to tread carefully toward bolder advertising plans in 2011. Its self-service ad platform was made generally available in the United States in April 2013, broadening the pool of potential buyers.
The new targeting arrangement adds external tracking partners and behavior-based audience data to that ad business. Its Do Not Track framing matters because it pairs more granular ad targeting with a user privacy preference rather than treating the two as separate systems.
First-order effects
- Twitter advertisers gain access to audiences selected using behavior and reading habits, while media6degrees, Chango, and Adara become inputs to Twitter's ad-targeting system.
- Users affected by the new targeting receive a Do Not Track option alongside the expanded behavioral-ad program.
Second-order effects
- Twitter's self-service advertisers can compete for more defined audiences, increasing the value of the platform's targeting capabilities rather than relying solely on promoted-message formats.
- The three tracking partners gain a distribution path into Twitter campaigns, making their audience data part of the platform's advertiser offering.
Third-order effects
- If platforms pair behavioral targeting with meaningful opt-out signals, privacy controls become a product requirement within ad-tech infrastructure rather than an afterthought to monetization.
- The move points toward social advertising built around inferred interests and off-platform behavior, with user choice determining how broadly that data may be used.
The trend: Social platforms are combining self-service advertising with behavioral audience data while embedding privacy preferences into the targeting workflow.