Dear Twitter Staff,

I really need some clarification on the different type of keyword targeting that you have available. What does each of these mean?

BROAD_KEYWORD
UNORDERED_KEYWORD
PHRASE_KEYWORD
EXACT_KEYWORD
NEGATIVE_PHRASE_KEYWORD
NEGATIVE_UNORDERED_KEYWORD
NEGATIVE_EXACT_KEYWORD

A description or understanding for each of these would be really helpful, as it is not very clear from the API docs what this means.

  • BROAD_KEYWORD is a fuzzy search.
  • UNORDERED_KEYWORD will match any of the given keywords in any order.
  • PHRASE_KEYWORD – not sure.
  • EXACT_KEYWORD will match items that contain this exact keyword, in this exact order.
  • NEGATIVE are applied like the ones above, but inverted results—matching on items that do not contain them.
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@jublonet Thanks for the suggestion.

I keep receiving the error and it is preventing me from updating my line item.

Your request (POST https://ads-api.twitter.com/0/accounts/18ce53yrq2p/targeting_criteria) resulted in the following errors: INVALID_TARGETING_TYPE: TargetingCriterion with targeting_type EXACT_KEYWORD cannot be combined with LineItem with placement_type PROMOTED_TWEETS

The main thing is that we are not setting any EXACT_KEYWORDS. So I am confused as to why we are receiving this error. Any thoughts?

Hi,

This is a little tricky to notice but you can see at https://dev.twitter.com/ads/campaigns/targeting that it says that Promoted Account placement type will allow Keyword Types (Any), but Timeline and Search say “Non-exact” which means exactly that you cannot use Exact Keyword there. Exact Keyword is a very restrictive matching type and not so suitable for those scenarios.

The explanation for different types of keyword matching is also on the same page (near the bottom).

Thanks,

John

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@JBabichJapan
Thanks for your response John. But we were not setting any Exact Keyword. That’s the problem. Does Negative Exact keyword also come as an Exact Keyword?

Negative exact keyword would also be considered an exact keyword. We will consider updating docs to make it clearer!

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@JBabichJapan

Hey John. I took your advice, but it looks like for Twitter Timelines and Profiles placement, this Exact Keywords do not work. See the following error message:

Your request (POST https://ads-api.twitter.com/0/accounts/18ce53yrq2p/targeting_criteria) resulted in the following errors: INVALID_TARGETING_TYPE: TargetingCriterion with targeting_type EXACT_KEYWORD cannot be combined with LineItem with placement_type PROMOTED_TWEETS_FOR_TIMELINES_AND_PROFILES

Hi,

I actually meant that EXACT_KEYWORD would only work for Promo Account placement type, the ones the exact type does not work for are timeline and search.

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