Twitter has begun testing video ads embedded into user’s newsfeeds, as the social network looks to rival Facebook’s recent foray into auto-start video ads.
The new format will be similar to most popular ad product, Promoted Tweets, which are ads that look like tweets and appear in users’ content feed.
The videos will be embedded into the tweets via Twitter’s “card” technology that supports other media-rich ads such as the recently released mobile app-install ad.
In a blog post, Twitter said the tests, which began earlier this year, “have shown that Tweets containing native Twitter video generate better engagement and more video views than before.”
Twitter has traditionally been a text-heavy service, and it is only during the last year that the company has introduced image previews into the stream, significantly changing the look and feel of the service.
“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,” said David Regan, senior product manager for TV and video.
Video ads could be a potentially lucrative product for Twitter, which began mixing advertisements and video with its Amplify service last year.
Amplify lets networks such as the NFL distribute brief video replays of game highlights on Twitter in near-real time, with short ads embedded. Twitter splits the ad revenue with the networks.
With promoted videos, all of the ad revenue will go to Twitter. It gives marketers another outlet to tease shows and pitch products in video clips that can run as long as 10 minutes.
The overall goal is to bring more video into our users’ timelines to create a richer and more engaging Twitter,” said the company in a blog post.
View a sample of the ad format below:
