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Some Periscope live-streaming videos will be getting pre-roll ads, says Twitter

If you enjoy watching live-streaming Periscope videos, be prepared to start seeing some pre-roll ads first. Twitter has announced that it will start selling the ad-slots from today.

The deal is an extension of the one reached earlier with ad company Amplify, reports Re/code.

The ads are powered by Amplify, Twitter’s existing pre-roll video ad product, which the company uses to run short commercials ahead of popular video, like NFL or NBA highlights. In those cases, the content creators get roughly 70 percent of the ad revenue, and Twitter keeps 30 percent. A company spokesperson says these ad splits are “similar” to the existing Amplify deals.

This means that only those brands which already have a partnership deal with Amplify will see their videos monetized.

Reuters notes that Twitter is being careful to avoid the mess in which Google recently found itself, when major brands found their ads embedded into – or appearing alongside – hate videos on YouTube.

Twitter is only offering up a select group of publishers for brands to buy ads against, which will let advertisers know exactly where their ads are showing up. “This is the solution to that problem,” Matthew Derella, Twitter’s vice president of global revenue and operations, told Reuters. “We believe the advertiser should have control.”

The move is intended to help reverse Twitter’s slowing revenue growth, ad revenue falling in the final quarter of last year. The company has been gauging interest in an optional subscription tier, with around 9% of 9to5Mac readers willing to pay $5/month for an ad-free experience.


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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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