Pay for play: Twitter launches video ads in news feeds

Twitter has followed the lead of social media rival Facebook by integrating video advertisements into users’ news feeds.

Facebook made the move to serve video ads via third-party websites earlier in the year.

Twitter announced a beta test of its ‘Promoted Videos’ in a blog post on Tuesday.

It said it had been testing a new Twitter “video card” that streamlined video playback and brought one-tap viewing to users’ timelines since earlier in the year.

“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 the social media giant.

“By using Promoted Video, it’s easy for brands to upload and distribute video on Twitter, and to measure the reach and effectiveness of this content.”

According to TechCrunch, the move comes as Twitter looks to show advertisers and investors that Twitter content actually reaches a larger audience due to views by non-logged in users.

The company is also working to make it easier for advertisers to set up campaigns by running ads through a cost-per-view buying model.

This would mean advertisers would only pay for ads when a user starts playing the video.