For the past two years, advertisers have used
Now Twitter is making it much simpler to use Amplify with a new version of the product called Auto Amplify. It is now available to all Twitter advertisers, just as Amplify is hitting its two-year anniversary. The revamped product will make it faster and easier for brands and media publishers like NBC to create campaigns together. The new feature could prove to be important to Twitter as it aims to boost its ad business, which analysts say is struggling to grow.
Through Amplify, for example, brands like Revlon can sponsor tweets that feature a video from Vine or another source, an animated GIF, a photo or an infographic owned or published by a media company. The clip might feature a player scoring in a soccer game or a snippet from a TV show like New Girls. The sponsor can promote itself through ad pre-roll in a video, by promoting tweets with their brand name or using hashtags, among other options. Now, an advertiser can upload their pre-roll on Twitter's ads dashboard with the option to automatically promote Amplify tweets. A publisher can then submit their tweet with video or another visual to a live Amplify campaign, reducing much of the back and forth that used to occur between Twitter and partners to make a deal, the company said.
"We're reducing down to zero the amount of time it takes for advertisers to power that tweet out to users," said Glenn Brown, Twitter's senior director of content partnerships and Amplify. "When the roar of the crowd is loudest on Twitter is the prime time to inject a clip into that roar and see it multiply by being retweeted and shared. You need to be able to get that clip into people's phones when they're most passionate about it."
Amplify gives brands and media publishers visibility among each other's audiences. But Brown said Twitter thinks that the change will also make the site more enjoyable for users by giving them higher quality visuals more quickly. When Amplify started two years ago, he said it grew out of a desire to create a user experience that was more visually in sync with events as they unfold in real life.
"We thought, wouldn't it be the most Twitter-y thing in the world to be able to make it seem like your TV or the game is beaming a real-time clip down into your phone for you to share with your friends," Brown said. "Wouldn't it be the most Twitter-y thing to hear your phone buzz and see a dunk happen again. The more real time it is and the better the targeting is, the more magical that experience is."
In one recent Amplify ad, Samsung sponsored a tweet with Billboard Music Award video footage of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. The tweet used the hashtag #CongratsTaylor, and within the 140-character limit, noted that the award was presented by Samsung, and mentioned an official Samsung handle.
The update to Amplify comes as Twitter faces pressure from Wall Street to prove it can successfully monetize advertising over the long-term and tackle slowing user growth. The first quarter marked Twitter's weakest quarterly revenue growth as a public company. However, Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo said after earnings that the company is on track and that revenue will improve as the site's direct response ad business matures. The move also comes just months after Twitter acquired video streaming app Periscope, which is helping make live video more popular on Twitter than ever before.
Amplify Branches Beyond Sports, The U.S.
Beyond running campaigns that are more automated, the media content in Amplify ads has also been expanding since the program's inception. When Amplify began in May 2013, it was a U.S. program, focused on sports events, especially from
The program is also becoming more global. Amplify has 92 content partners outside of the U.S., making up more than half of all partnerships; there are 164 Amplify partners in 18 countries, the company said. The media is changing, too. GIFs are becoming more common, and in some cases beat the engagement rates of videos, Brown said. The Major League Baseball Players Association has an entire Twitter account dedicated to GIFs.
Several of Twitter's own video products have helped propel its ad business. In 2012, Twitter acquired Vine, a tool that regular users as well as publishers and brands use to make video clips. Last year, Twitter bought SnappyTV, a service publishers can use to edit and share clips. And earlier this year, the social network bought Niche to help brands make ads with online video stars.
Amplify allows brands to target users in the same way they can through promoted tweets, Brown said. Geography, gender, language, device, interests and usernames are a few of the factors that can help direct campaigns. Regardless of who they target, Amplify tweets are focused on the mobile experience, Brown said, noting that about 90% of video views on Twitter occur on mobile devices.
"We've taken the age-old concept of sponsorship and adapted it to mobile," said Brown. "The phone is becoming the machine to see what is happening on televisions across the world."
