Twitter unveils expanded video-advertising programme

Twitter made the announcement at an event for advertisers and marketers in New York City, where executives also talked about the broader vision for video on Twitter. Advertisers can select categories of video content with which they want to run pre-roll and they can layer on additional audience targeting.

The new program opens up the Twitter Amplify ad program to let virtually any video publisher or creator monetise their content with 6-second pre-roll ads – without having a deal in place with an advertiser or agency. Under this model, Twitter will keep 30% of the ad revenue, while 70% goes to the creator. Facebook, which takes a 45 per cent share of ad revenue, has also been bolstering its video ad offering of late, creating a Suggested Video feed whenever users click on video content.

“Twitter video is now open for business”, said Twitter’s Senior Product Director of Media, TV, and Video Baljeet Singh.

“Today, Twitter can show everything that is happening in the world 10 to 15 minutes faster than any other service, ” Dorsey said. The crux was they had to source their own partners for the pre or post roll ads – a few examples being Comparethemarket.com (with ITV), Stella Artois (with Wimbledon) and Samsung (Oscars selfies). Publishers can simply upload and publish their content through Twitter’s video dashboard and begin collecting revenue immediately as ads are automatically placed before it. Several publishers have joined the beta test of the Twitter Amplify marketplace, including BuzzFeed, Vox Media, AOL, Fox, MTV, Time, Mashable, amusing or Die and Univision.

The updated Amplify program is now on a testing mode in United States with limited advertisers and publishers, and has plans to grow globally in future.

Ms Marouli added that part of the reason for increased interest in video advertising was that people who want to watch videos might turn off ad-blocker programmes which remove advertising from web pages.