Twitter rolls out partner audiences, its latest ad-targeting feature

Twitter on Thursday announced a new ad-targeting feature called 'partner audiences', another tool that helps marketers push ads to specific consumer segments.

Partner audiences comes from Twitter's collaboration with Acxiom and Datalogix, with the two analytics companies providing Twitter with access to more than 1,000 partner audiences for brands to select from.

Previously, Twitter partnered with Datalogix to help brands figure out the offline sales impact for Tweets.

Partner audiences is also focused on consumer data produced beyond Twitter's digital walls -- like when a person develops a habit of buying peanut butter candy or gourmet coffee.

As Twitter explains in a blog post:

By using a partner to provide the desired audience, an auto brand can connect with audiences that are in-market for a new car. A CPG company can reach customers that have previously purchased products in their category. And luxury brands can limit campaigns to shoppers who earn a household income above a certain threshold.

Partner audiences can be used in combination with look-alike targeting, giving marketers the ability to expand their reach to people with interests similar to those in a chosen partner audience.

While the feature may sound a tad intrusive, it's not Twitter's first attempt at ad targeting. The social network announced last November that it would begin tracking other applications its users have installed on their mobile devices, in an effort to better target ads and content.

And for those users leery of the whole thing, Twitter is giving them an escape clause, in the form of an opt-out box within their privacy settings.