General election 2015: Twitter lets political parties and companies target ads by postcode

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Twitter is giving political parties and other advertisers the option to target individual postcodes with adverts.

The site’s geo-targeted advertising tools already allow users to send adverts to nine different regions, such as the North-west or the East Midlands, or to metro areas like Birmingham or London.

But now advertisers will be able to target adverts to particular postcodes, which the company says will allow parties to focus their advertising spending on constituencies where races are likely to be close.

That will allow parties to focus on their environmental policies in constituencies that are likely to be sites of fracking, for instance. Twitter points to the example of the 81 constituencies where the incumbent MP is standing down, and parties could use the adverts to promote their candidates.

Twitter allows its ads to be targeted by gender and language, as well as by geography. The network says that 80% of its users now come to it through a mobile device, and so it expects mobile and geographical location to become increasingly important.