Newsletter 
Video platform Periscope now supports pre-roll ads within Twitter, the San Francisco-based social media giant announced on Tuesday. The company described the latest addition to the promotional framework of its video service as a new opportunity for both brands looking to reach new audiences and content creators interested in monetizing their content more efficiently. The feature will offer the same degree of control advertisers already have through Periscope’s Amplify program, allowing them to link their promotional messages to specific creators and even individual broadcasts, the company said. The ads themselves won’t be any different to those that already appear in Twitter videos, meaning Periscope broadcasts on Twitter will now be able to start after a short pre-roll promotional message is played.
Naturally, that isn’t to say all Periscope videos published on Twitter will now feature pre-roll ads as their frequency will depend on a number of factors like the type of broadcasts and demographic profiles of users. The company encouraged marketing professionals to come up with creative ways to advertise their products and services with pre-roll Periscope ads, implying how Periscope’s unique combination of formats would perhaps be wasted on regular ads. Furthermore, Twitter specifically pointed out how its latest video offering is a “brand-safe” type of advertising, perhaps referencing the recent advertiser boycott YouTube has been hit with over ad placement concerns.
The addition of pre-roll ads to Periscope videos within Twitter isn’t the only recent feature the San Francisco-based Internet firm introduced to its video service. Earlier this month, the company launched the Periscope Producer API designed to help developers come up with new methods of sharing video broadcasts. Besides allowing developers to ennoble the user experience of Periscope, Twitter also recently started working on the idea of adding a paid component to its Twitter account management software TweetDeck. The latter feature and the aforementioned addition of pre-roll ads to Periscope videos showing up on Twitter are both likely yet another pair of the company’s attempts to monetize its social network. As revealed by Twitter’s latest financial report, the firm is still struggling with revenue growth and has now decided to focus on profitability at some expense of user acquisition, a move that’s also reflected by the newly introduced Periscope pre-roll ads.