Twitter users can expect to see more video advertisements on their Twitter feed as the microblogging platform launches Promoted Video in beta.
The new advertising initiative builds upon Twitter's Amplify program, which allows media outlets and brands to upload short videos with embedded advertisements on Twitter. Under the Amplify program, Twitter splits revenues with the advertiser. With the new Promoted Videos, Twitter takes all of the cake with a Cost per View (CPV) model that only charges advertisers every time a user views the video. Using Twitter's media-rich video card technology, advertisers will be able to embed videos as long as 10 minutes into their tweets.
Advertisers looking to publish Promoted Videos on Twitter will also have access to a set of video analytics tools that will provide them detailed information to analyze the success of their ad campaigns, such as the percentage of viewers who completed the video and a breakdown of organic views versus paid views.
The move is Twitter's answer to Facebook's video ads introduced late last year. Unlike Twitter's model, however, Facebook depends on an algorithm that identifies videos it deems to be of high quality and automatically makes these videos available in autoplay on user's news feeds.
Twitter's announcement is said to have gained a nod of approval from the interactive advertising agency. The CPV fee structure is certainly favorable for advertisers as it charges fees only for a specific action initiated by the user, while the move to allow the user to decide whether or not to play the video is less intrusive to the overall Twitter experience compared to Facebook's autoplay video ads.
"Video is an incredible storytelling medium and we're thrilled to be giving brands, publishers and a subset of verified users the ability to share organic and Promoted Video on Twitter," says David Regan, Twitter's senior product manager for TV and video in a blog post.
Regan also says that Twitter has been testing one-touch videos and video sharing and notes that "tweets containing native Twitter video generate better engagement and more video views than before."
Earlier in May, Twitter CEO Dick Costelo spoke at Re/code's Code Conference, highlighting the importance of video and dropping hints that Twitter might start introducing embedded videos soon.
"The overall goal is to bring more video into our users' timelines to create a richer and more engaging Twitter," Regan says.
