• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 13, 2013

There's data, and then there are insights and business intelligence gained from Twitter tweets and Pinterest pins. As marketers begin to understand insights coming from data, social sites have begun to increase efforts to parse data that provides deeper insights into meaning and content.

Changes to Twitter Ads center to improve campaign analytics were released Wednesday in an effort to give advertisers better targeted stats for real-time campaign management and reporting by providing more visibility into performance and numbers based on budgets spent.

The analytics platform is built and maintained in-house. The company processes approximately 400 million tweets daily, about a billion tweets every 2.5 days. All that data requires processing to dig through the insights. The real-time data gives big brands the opportunity to act like a start-up, nimble and quick.

The user interface now reports all engagements that Promoted Tweets receive including earned media, not just those that advertisers purchase. Christopher Golda, project manager, revenue at Twitter, believes the change gives marketers better insight into the impact of Promoted Tweets.

Advertisers can now segment audiences in Promoted Tweet and Promoted Account campaigns based on device, location, gender and interest. When an advertiser sees a strong following on a specific device type, they can target just that device or make edits to other campaigns from their analytics dashboard.

Advertisers can target by desktop and laptop computers; iOS for apps and Web on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch; Android for apps and Web on Android phones and tablets; BlackBerry for apps and Web on BlackBerry phones and tablets, and other mobile devices for Web on smartphones and tablets.

Aside from Twitter, another social site added analytics this week. Pinterest made the tool available to any verified account, providing the ability to track the number of people pinning content from their Web sites. It shows bloggers, businesses and brands the most recent pins, how many people have visited their sites from Pinterest, and how many Pinterest impressions the content generates.