Twitter targets ads at logged-out users

In a bid to deflect growing concerns on Wall Street about stalled user growth, Twitter said it would start showing ads to people who are not logged into the service.

The goal of the test is to help advertisers on Twitter boost their campaigns by driving additional clicks, conversions or video views, depending on the ad product.

Of course targeting logged-out users may not be as lucrative to advertisers as they won’t have access to the plethora of targeting and demographic options that Twitter offers for logged-in users.

Twitter’s move is aimed at targeting promoted tweets and videos at the 500 million people who read tweets without having a Twitter account, or who aren’t signed in at the time. The first locations that will have access will be the US, UK, Japan and Australia with more countries planned in the future.

Last quarter, the company revealed that it had only 320 million monthly active users, with weak guidance for the quarter ahead – meaning that Twitter’s ability to capture its much larger non-registered audience represents a big opportunity.

Twitter is just testing this new ad-serving method for now, but it could more than double Twitter’s base of monetizable users.

Twitter said Thursday it was expanding its advertising to allow marketers to reach people who use the messaging platform without logging in.

The ads shown to logged out users will be in the form of promoted Tweets.