Twitter expands its video offering with its launch of Amplify Beta
Twitter is looking to expand its video offering, launching a beta version of a new advertising product, Amplify Beta, in the UK to allow advertisers to buy video ad spots. Amplify Beta hopes to make it easier for publishers and creators to monetise their video content. Bruce Daisley, Vice President of Twitter in Europe, said that Twitter has seen the amount of video played on Twitter increase 150 times, mobile video consumption is expected to grow 13 times by 2019.

It already owns video apps Vine and Periscope and now Twitter is looking to dial up video content on its own platform as it launches a beta version of a new advertising product in the UK that will allow marketers to easily buy video ad spots.

Amplify Beta is an extension of Twitter’s current product Amplify designed to let more publishers and creators monetise their video content, while making it easier for advertisers to reach massive audiences and sponsor content platform wide.

Currently only in the US Amplify Beta, which Twitter today (22 October) revealed is “coming soon” to the UK and then Europe, means advertisers can run video ads against premium content automatically based on their preferred content categories — without having an existing publisher-advertiser deal in place.

At IAB Digital Upfronts earlier today Twitter ran a session called Video Now where the social platform outlined the importance of video in its future, particularly on mobile. Bruce Daisley, vice president of Twitter in Europe said that the company has seen the amount of video played on Twitter increase 150 times and that mobile video consumption will grow 13 times by 2019.

“We’ve really had our eye on the industry and its expectations of advertising and I think it’s fair to say that we have set a very high bar with the standards we expect,” he said. “We came out and said we will only charge when there is 100 per cvent viewability… in addition we’ve seen with the arrival of auto play not only have videos gone up but we are seeing seven times more completed videos and users are 2.5 times more likely to prefer it over click-to-pay…We know that video connects emotionally.”

Twitter also, it seems, has designs on YouTube’s dominance of the content creator world after the relatively recent acquisition of Niche, a network for content creators to analyse, grow and monetise their audience. Major brands including HP, Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut are already working with some of the network’s 18,000 creators to create content across all social channels that resonates with millennials.

The social media site also announced that it’s recently launched product Moments, a separate tab on Twitter showing a curated feed of live events, celebrities and cultural memes regardless of whether you follow the account or not, will launch in the UK and be headed up by Joanna Geary, currently news partnership manager. She joined Twitter in 2013 from The Guardian where she worked as social and communities editor.