Twitter banking on video

Jack Dorsey

Investing in live streaming video will be one of Twitter’s five key priorities this year, according to CEO Jack Dorsey.

Speaking on an analyst call to mark Twitter’s less than stellar fourth-quarter financial results, which saw the social networking site post an improved US$90 million loss but zero growth in monthly usage, Dorsey said that the company aimed to be “a leader in live streaming video” based on its Periscope initiative.

Dorsey said that Twitter was working hard to build in full support for video and integrate broadcasters’ streams into the platform.

Referring to Twitter’s video advertising product that allows broadcasters to publish in-Tweet video clips accompanied by pre-roll or post-roll ads, Dorsey said that Twitter now had over 225 Amplify premium video content providers signed up for the service.

Dorsey said that using Twitter for video advertising also helped broadcaster achieve a better return on investment on TV advertising. He said that research had shown that setting up advertising on Twitter to go hand-in-hand with TV ads increased the return on investment in TV ads by between 8% and 16%. He said he believed there as a rationale for marketers to “move budget out of underperforming display” advertising into Twitter because of the uplift provided by Amplify.

Speaking to analysts on the same call, chief operating officer Adam Bain said that Twitter was now seeing “a massive amount of engagement around video”, placing it in a good position to tap into marketing budgets around video. He said that 90% of advertisers that booked slots on TV around last weekend’s Super Bowl event also ran ads on Twitter, with over half of that budget being dedicated to video.

Bain said that a third of Twitter’s managed clients now used video as a tool.