Twitter advertising is becoming big business, and not just for Twitter. As Twitter works on building its Promoted Tweets feature and sells sponsored Trending Topics spots, other companies are finding their own ways of capitalizing on the Twitter buzz. TwitVid, a popular social video platform has announced SocialAds, a stand-alone video ad network, aimed at boosting Twitter followers and retweets.
"This new video advertising network represents a shift from stagnant pre-roll video advertising to advertising technology designed to leverage the Social Graph," a TwitVid representative tells WebProNews.
TwitVid says the network is designed to help advertisers increase sales by strengthening their social media presence through customized campaigns with specific audience targeting. Advertisers are offered "retweet-to-watch" and "follow-to-watch" functionalities for their videos. With the former, viewers are asked to retweet a message before hey watch the video, and with the latter, they will be prompted to follow an advertiser’s Twitter account before watching the video.
"Traditional means of monetizing video has heavily relied on pre-roll ads, which work great for premium content but can be quite suffocating for an end-user who may only be trying to watch a short video," says TwitVid co-founder Mo Al Adham. "SocialAds offers an alternative advertising solution, which provides measurable value to both advertisers and viewers. Through SocialAds’ proprietary technology media viewers are exposed to social media accounts targeted to be of high interest to them. In turn, advertisers are exposed to and gain engaged customers whom, once acquired, can be communicated with as a trusted brand."
TwitVid says that during a private beta test of the product, brands were getting over 400 new followers in less than an hour, with 2% of viewers following a brand. Prices for SocialAds are based on a price-per-action model. More info can be found here.