Twitter’s new promoted videos may be its most exciting ad product yet.
Last week, Twitter announced that it was testing promoted videos that will show up in user’s timelines but must be clicked on to play. So far, the ads seem to be a hit with marketers since they’re considerably cheaper than video ads on Facebook, and viewers don’t seem to mind seeing them. In fact, they’re actively engaging with them.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, several marketers raved about the engagement rates they were seeing in tests of the ads:
Users have shown a high propensity to watch the ads, and in some instances they’ve proved considerably cheaper than buying video views on video-centric sites such as YouTube, agencies say.
“We’re seeing very good engagement rates; the preliminary results are very strong,” explained Amy Peterman, Paid Social Practice Lead at digital agency 360i, which has already tested video ads for some of its CPG and entertainment clients.
“We’re really shocked at how well it’s performed,” added Jeremy Leon, Senior Social Strategist at social media agency Laundry Service.
For brands, the effectiveness of Twitter ads is a huge opportunity. Twitter is already the main platform for real-time marketing and customer engagement, and with the addition of video ads, brands have the ability to really promote their best, most creative pieces of content, which is usually video. Viewers no longer have to go through the multiple clicks of a YouTube embed, a single click on a promoted video is enough to load and play it.
In addition, brands are no longer restricted by the six seconds of Vine when it comes to a native video format for Twitter. Although the six second restriction leads to plenty of creativity, there’s a lot more that innovative video makers can do with the additional time.
However, as the WSJ points out, the ads won’t be cheap for long. Currently there’s limited ad space being offered to a select number of brands. If it takes off as well as these agencies are predicting, you can bet Twitter is going to spike those rates exponentially.
