In early August Twitter announced a beta
test for its new Promoted Video format aimed at marketers looking to distribute
their video content on the platform. Twitter originally started testing for
this new feature at the beginning of the year and after some slight tweaks it
is now available on the platform as a limited release.
With video advertising becoming an
increasingly prevalent part of online marketing and video proving to be the
most popular media form on Twitter, it is a natural progression for the
platform to roll out this type of functionality. The company is on a mission to
convince investors and advertisers that despite a slowing adoption rate, it
still provides substantial reach and high levels of engagement, and the new
promoted video format is aimed at increasing both these aspects.
The new feature will appear embedded on
users’ timelines with a play button appearing on the thumbnail as seen below.
Once a user clicks on the video it will automatically enlarge to take over the
whole screen, giving the most engaging viewing experience.
Using Promoted Video will also give
advertisers access to Twitter’s new video analytics, including completion
percentage figures and also a comparison between organic and paid video views.
These new features will increase advertisers’ ability to measure the
effectiveness and reach of each video.
Displaying Ads has had access to this beta over
the last month and has been testing it with several brands across different
verticals. Overall performance so far
has been very positive, with low cost per views and high engagement rates for
the campaigns we’ve run. The analytics feature has proved very useful too when
running A/B tests, as it allows for in-depth analysis on which video content is
proving to be the most engaging. It will be exciting to see how this new
feature will impact campaigns and the sort of effect it will have on engagement
rates, so watch this space!
