Twitter have announced a new way to target ads on their network in time for World Emoji Day on July 17th. Businesses will now be able to use emojis as keywords in order to connect with users expressing similar sentiments…
In a post on their blog on the 15th June, Twitter announced that they were releasing the new capability in line with their values of constantly improving precise targeting to “help drive deep engagement and better performance for brands.” Apparently an epic 110 billion emojis have been tweeted since 2014.
Emoji targeting allows marketers and advertisers to target users who have engaged or tweeted certain emojis through a selection of the network’s official Partners. Supposedly the feature allows brands a unique opportunity to reach users with certain mindsets, passions and even types of food – for example, the humble pizza emoji which has become ubiquitous with Giraffe Social Media #FatFriday tweets.
World Emoji Day
As pointed out by Twitter, the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2015 was none other than ‘Face with Tears of Joy’, or 😂 as it is more commonly known. This alone is a key signifier for the massive increase in the popularity of emojis across the world. World Emoji Day takes place on July 17th as it is the day that is displayed on the iOS calendar Emoji. Created by the founder of Emojipedia Jeremy Burge in 2014, according to the official website the purpose of the day is as follows:
“We ❤️ love emojis. You 💙 love emojis. Let’s celebrate them! 🎉 celebrate them! The purpose of 🌎 World Emoji Day is to promote the use of emojis and spread the 😝 enjoyment that the bring to all of those 👬👫👭 around us.”
As of yet we are unsure as to how successful emoji targeting will be. As primarily an expression of mood, it could have the potential to be a key identifier for reaching and engaging new audience members if used alongside sufficient industry focused keywords. However only time will tell to what extent.
