Twitter Brings Programmatic to Social With Amplify Update

Twitter has added automated buying to its two-year-old Amplify, a product that shows short videos from live events.

The new program is called Auto Amplify. It enables brands to execute an Amplify campaign without talking to a sales representative. When a publisher assigns a visual tweet to an Amplify program, it will be automatically added to any campaign that is configured with that program. An Amplify sponsor can just upload their pre-roll ad to the dashboard with an option of automatically running it as a promoted Tweet.

By leveraging automation technology, Twitter is hoping to further monetize the video promotion tool with the relative ease and potential for scale of programmatic buying, says Ben Kartzman, chief executive officer (CEO) for ad-tech company Spongecell.

“Twitter is trying to bring programmatic creative to the native and social world,” Kartzman says. “For advertisers, the expectation is programmatic, enabling them to promote their content in real time. I think this is a step towards doing that. Everyone wants to have their own Super Bowl Oreo moment. Amplify is really a response to that and helps marketers tap into real-time marketing.”

However, advertisers cannot simply choose any video from Twitter’s library. In order to use Auto Amplify, they need to sign a deal with an Amplify publisher and can only pick up videos from that publisher.

Twitter declined to disclose its product road map for Auto Amplify. It’s unknown if this addition is available for Amplify sponsors outside of the U.S. as well.