Social advertisers rejoice!  Twitter announced the long-awaited launch of its Ads API today in an official blog post.  It joins only Facebook and LinkedIn as global social networks that allow marketers to create, manage and optimize ads through an API.

The Basics
The initial launch is specifically for Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets as Twitter will continue to maintain exclusive control over its Promoted Trend offering. In the past all ads were managed manually on Twitter, which made creating and updating campaigns a time-intensive task.  Marketers will now be able to create and manage Twitter ads via tools provided by third-party service companies.  Twitter is launching the API with five partners: Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, Shift and TBG Digital.

What does this mean for advertisers on Twitter?

Create More Sophisticated Campaigns
An API will allow marketers to create multiple campaigns simultaneously, opening up the ability to create and manage more campaigns efficiently.  Advertisers will be able to make batches of ads and tweak them specifically based on user groups and devices.

Manage Campaigns Efficiently
The ability to manage Twitter ads from the same systems used to manage social listening, social content and social ads for other networks will increase efficiency and integration with existing cross-channel advertising strategies.

Enhanced Targeting Capabilities
API partners will be able to layer in their own analytics as well as advertisers’  customer data to compile new audience profiles.