TwitVid Archive

Here’s a twist on typical pre-roll and overlay online video advertising. Twitter video hosting service TwitVid has launched a new advertising platform today called SocialAds. The goal with SocialAds is simple: to get you (or your brand) more Twitter followers and/or retweets of your advertisements.

Here’s how SocialAds works…after creating an account, you setup an ad campaign. TwitVid says they host videos for major music groups including Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and The Jonas Brothers. They also work with the NBA and the PGA. The ad campaign focuses either on obtaining new followers or retweeting an ad. The ads are displayed within the videos hosted on TwitVid and you only pay when the desired action is completed.

Bidding will begin at one dollar per follower and seventy-five cents per retweet, with higher bids receiving better placement on the advertising units.

TwitVid notes, “during a private beta test of SocialAds, participating brands received more that 400 new followers in less than an hour. Two percent of those viewers who were shown the advertisement followed a brand.” I have no idea if this would be considered good or not. I think the more important stats would be how many remain connected to the brand after 30 and 90 days. It’s also important to note that most won’t unfollow others on Twitter – similar to how most won’t remove a RSS feed.

Currently SocialAds is running on TwitVid’s main site but the company plans to integrate with partners in the future.

This new launch is yet another reason I continue to suggest that Twitter is just one big advertisement. The idea of buying Twitter followers appears to be a concept Twitter itself is also considering in the near future.