Getty Images, Kevork Djansezian Twitter has issued an apology after using the accounts of real users to promote its new advertising campaign.

TV ad targeting is the network's latest service designed for marketers to champion their programmes' adverts through Twitter . An image created for the campaign featured three accounts praising an advert for US coffee chain Barista Bar was posted on the company's blog page in May. The tweets may have been mocked up, but the users' accounts were real and used without their knowledge.

Brazilian William Mazeo's account was attributed as tweeting: "“I wish I could make fancy lattes like in the @barristabar commercial”. After seeing the blogpost he asked Twitter to disassociate himself from the promotion, saying: “Who knows what else they could promote using my name? That’s not cool”.

Neil Gottlieb, who runs a medical animation company in Philadelphia, was depicted as tweeting: “What is the song in the new @barristabar commercial? I love it!!” He said: It’s disturbing and has no place. To use my image and fake a tweet is wrong and needs to be addressed.”

A spokesman for the company said the image would be modified and a public apology issued. The accounts in the image have since been changed.

A statement on Twitter's blog read: "An earlier version of this blog post included an image with mock Tweets from real users of our platform. This was not OK. Once we became aware of this mistake we took it down immediately. We deeply apologize to the three users included in the earlier images."

Twitter claims that the impact of using Twitter in combination with TV advertising is significantly greater than that of using TV advertising alone. Tests with brands including Adidas, Holiday Inn Express, Jaguar and Samsung saw "significant improvements" to key brand metrics including message association and purchase intent, the company said.

During a handful of studies, users that Twitter identified as being exposed on TV and then engaged with a Promoted Tweet demonstrate 95 per cent stronger message association and 58 per cent higher purchase intent compared to users identified as being exposed on TV alone.