Twitter opened new gates to advertisers with setting ad targeting based on the emoji people use. This can be called a mindblowing achievement - taking into consideration that emojis are meant to express one’s feelings and desires.

From now on, brands can already target you based on keywords, but emoji are particularly powerful because they are a concise way of expressing your mood – especially when you’re limited to 140 characters on Twitter.

Whenever you use the Pizza emoji, Twitter will know that you are in a mood for pizza or like eating pizza. If you use a particular flag a lot, brands might be able to better guess your sports leanings as well.

In any case, Twitter says over 110 billion emoji have been tweeted since 2014, so there’s a ton of material for brands to work with. The feature is rolling out to advertisers globally today. They will benefit greatly from the next month's World Emoji Day, on July 17.

Companies can make the most out of the cartoonish icons by targeting consumers who have tweeted or engaged with tweets that feature emoji. That means if someone tweets a pizza emoji anywhere around the world, she can now be targeted by a local restaurant to come in for a nice meal.

"According to the Oxford Dictionary, the 2015 word of the year was none other than :D --an emoji," Neil Shah, ads API product manager at Twitter said in a blog post. "Emojis have become a ubiquitous way for people, publishers, and brands to express their feelings."
The feature is available to all advertisers through Twitter's select Ads API partners, which include AdParlor, Amobee, HYFN, Perion, SocialCode, and 4C.

Sources:
www.adage.com
www.thenextweb.com