Twitter Inc. has rolled out a tool called “Look-Alike” targeting that lets marketers direct ads to shoppers who share traits with brands’ customers.

The tool builds on Twitter’s Tailored Audiences, which lets marketers use browser cookies and other information, such as consumers’ e-mail addresses, to retarget shoppers on the social network. The new tool enables a marketer to find consumers who have similar traits with a brand’s existing customers, such as age, gender, location and interests.

Look-Alike targeting enables a retailer, for example, to reach consumers similar to those who have downloaded its app. To run an ad encouraging consumers to download its app, the retailer would share with Twitter its information about the shoppers who have downloaded its app, such as their e-mail addresses. Twitter would then match that information to its users’ accounts, which contain a wealth of information about those users, such as their age, gender and interests. The social network can then use that information to show consumers similar to the brand’s existing customers an ad encouraging them to download an app.

“This lets you reach users who are most like your best existing customers,” writes Kelton Lynn, Twitter’s group product manager, revenue, in a blog post.

The social network has also begun letting advertisers target consumers based on their mobile phone numbers, as well as Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android mobile advertising IDs, which are identifiers assigned by either Apple or Google when a consumer downloads an app. The new features give marketers new ways to segment their customers into groups or audiences. A retailer that has a customer list that contains phone numbers, for example, can use Twitter’s Tailored Audiences tool to encourage those shoppers to download its app. And it can use Look-Alike targeting to find consumers similar to those shoppers.

Look-Alike targeting mirrors a similar feature Facebook has offered since February 2013. Like Look-Alike targeting, Facebook’s tool, called Lookalike Audiences builds on another advertising service, Facebook’s Custom Audiences. Custom Audiences lets advertisers target customers based on information that shoppers have shared with the marketer off of Facebook.