Twitter has been actively looking for ways to make money, and now it has found a new way to monetize live content on the platform by opening Periscope to the Amplify program. Twitter’s Periscope ad product will debut on Andy Roddick’s broadcast covering the U.S. Open, and it has Grey Goose Vodka and JPMorgan Chase as brand partners, reports Business Insider.
Dual benefit for Twitter
Amplify is an advertising product that pairs brands with content creators and is typically used for pre-roll video ads. However, it doesn’t seem that Twitter has any plans of incorporating pre-roll ads into Periscope anytime soon. There are several threads in these branded stream ads.
First, the creator tweets the stream and brands share it via Promoted Tweets. The creator will tweet a highlight video of the stream once the live stream concludes, and the brand partners share it. There is a small change for the title of the stream to will include the name of the brand partner, but the actual streaming experience will remain the same, BI explains.
Twitter will get dual benefits by opening Periscope to Amplify’s ad program. First, it will drive branded partnerships and ad revenue. The micro-blogging company is evolving into a digital TV platform, and Periscope will become increasingly integral to it. Live Periscope broadcasts have clear applications around sporting events. Therefore, it has become essential to monetize Periscope so as to secure a healthy stream of revenue going forward, notes BI.
Second, the move will encourage Periscope streaming by influencers. Last week the company made the deal more lucrative for creators that participate in its Amplify program by offering them a 70/30 split on all ad revenue. So influencers will have a strong incentive to go live on Twitter if this revenue sharing agreement is extended to Periscope broadcasts as well, says BI.
Gloomy expectations
Twitter will make more of such moves, considering what eMarketer expects of it. In February, the firm predicted that the number of active Twitter users in the U.S. will rise 8% year over year. However, in its August 15 report regarding declining Twitter usage among Americans, it backpedaled on that prediction. The most recent figures suggest usage will grow by a mere 2%.
Twitter’s growth over the next four years will be fairly flat, as per eMarketer’s expectations. The research firm now anticipates that by 2020, the micro-blogging site will have 3.6 million users — far fewer than the 13.9 million it originally predicted. It expects Facebook to have 15.2 million U.S. users over the same time frame.
