Twitter Video Ads Coming Soon; NYT's Programmatic Future

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Twitter’s Video Ads Mashup

Twitter is gearing up to introduce a new video ad product, according to Ad Age’s sources. Purportedly, the offering would resemble a mashup of Facebook’s autoplay video ads and YouTube’s pay-for-plays strategy. The product would autoplay promoted video ads for six seconds in the feed, and Twitter users would click through to play the videos in full. Advertisers would only be charged for fully watched videos. Ad Age’s Tim Peterson points out that only charging advertisers for fully watched videos could qualify views, and therefore boost viewability rates. Read it. Related: Twitter ad network plans from The Wall Street Journal’s Mike Shields.

NYT Programmatic Update

In an interview with The Media Briefing late last week, New York Times EVP of advertising Meredith Kopit Levien touched on the publisher’s programmatic trajectory. “We take automated buying and selling very seriously and we needed to do quite a bit of work in 2014 on the plumbing underneath that, making it easier technologically, and to do private and preferred programmatic deals,” she said. Looking forward, Levien said programmatic as a percentage of total business will grow modestly in 2015. “This year our CPMs are going up. … We’re selling better than we have in a long time on the direct side. Next year that will be an even bigger part of our business.” More.

Social Abides

Data from the Pew Research Center shows Facebook growth is slowing in the US, though it remains the most popular social network in the US. Despite a decrease in growth, daily engagement on Facebook hit 70%, up from 63% a year ago. Meanwhile, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter usage is growing substantially. “What the numbers don’t reveal was the time people spent on each service,” points out NYT tech reporter Vindu Goel, “Because most social networks generate revenue from advertising, more time on the service means a greater opportunity for visitors to see ads.”

Native Standards

In a roundup-style piece on native advertising projections for 2015, The Drum pools opinions from media agency, publisher, brand and vendor execs. Maxus head of digital strategy Tom Dunn says standardization issues will continue to plague native advertising, but that’s a blessing in disguise. “That lack of standardisation is also a fantastic USP,” Dunn says. “If native ads looked the same wherever they appear, they wouldn’t be native. And standardising native ads risks removing that which makes them so appealing – namely, seamless integration with the experience.” This particular debate is far from over. Read on.

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