Twitter will invest in original series and more video content in the future, as revealed by Matthew Derella, the company’s Vice President of Global Revenue and Operations. The San Francisco-based social media giant is set to attend digital content conference Newfronts for the first time ever this spring and is hoping its new video initiatives and previous investments in the sector will help it win some new clients in New York City. As a part of that strategy, Twitter will make a live video pitch to advertisers during the latest iteration of Newfronts that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is holding this May. Twitter is expected to arrive in New York City with a number of new live and original programming that it’s planning to air later this year.
The company said its social platform was used to stream over 600 hours of live videos covering 400 events during the first quarter of 2017, including content from Bloomberg, Major League Baseball (MLB), National Hockey League (NHL), and the National Football League (NFL). Twitter apparently still isn’t pleased with those numbers and will be looking to increase them in the coming months, in addition to developing new video advertising solutions for its existing and future clients. Twitter’s initial video push was mostly aimed at video content related to sports and live event coverage, but it’s possible that the company’s growing ambitions in the segment will also lead it to invest in a number of other genres.
This approach to ennobling a social media platform with exclusive and original video content isn’t a novel idea by any means. Apart from Twitter, Facebook has been adopting a similar strategy in recent years as the Menlo Park-based social media giant continues to invest in original programming in an effort to launch a video platform that can not only keep people on Facebook, but also compete with YouTube. Unlike Facebook, Twitter is seemingly focused on using video content to promote real-time conversations, which is in line with the general concept on which its social network is based. More information on Twitter’s upcoming video initiatives will follow by spring.