The next time you travel overseas, and start receiving tweets from local advertisers – don’t be alarmed! No, Twitter isn’t stalking you, its just brand managers utilizing Twitter’s new Follower Dashboard to identify where their followers are tweeting from.

Launched last week, Twitter now allows marketers to send out geo-relevant ads, and will also provide detailed user analytics that provide information on where the follower comes from, where they are tweeting from currently, and track how geo-relevant ads are performing with their audience. According to Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of revenue, marketers have been requesting for this information and Twitter is finally responding. “Now marketers can understand their audience and react better to that audience by refining their campaigns.”

An example of how this new function can assist marketers is allowing sponsored tweets, sponsored trends and sponsored accounts to reach out to followers at relevant locations. With Twitter’s existing 600 advertisers, Bain predicts that this new announcement will grow to 60,000 advertisers. Currently, Twitter is pricing their promoted trend at USD$120,000 a day, and clients will be able to see how their ads and content are performing in terms of re-tweets, follows, click-throughs and other related actions.

Facebook, the strongest competitor against Twitter, has been featuring geo-tracking functions for at least six months, according to Julian Cole, digital strategist at The Conscience Organisation.

“Geo-locating seems to have been the big thing in the last year and many brands are embracing this trend. Facebook has allowed status updates that feature the user’s location since last year and it has enabled advertising to be much more relevant for their selected audience. Instead of spamming their entire audience base, Facebook allows their advertisers to send out marketing materials based specifically on where they are, thus reducing spam to their other consumer,” says Cole. 

"Twitter seems rather slow is responding to this demand from advertisers, and it still does not change the fact that Twitter users have to seek out brands, instead of brands reaching out and getting in touch with their potential customers. What marketers need to keep in mind is that other sites, such as Facebook, has been doing this for a long time now and are much more focused in terms of assisting advertisers to produce relevant messaging to their customers"