Twitter took the stage at Internet Week New York Thursday to introduce a new advertising product for media and consumer brands.
Dubbed "Twitter Amplify," the product allows media brands and their advertising partners to promote television clips on Twitter -- think a 5 or 10-second replay from a basketball game accompanied by a short commercial from Ford, or a weather forecast from The Weather Channel followed by an ad for a restaurant chain.
Twitter began testing these ad units earlier this spring with various media partners, including Turner Broadcasting and Disney's ESPN. Here's an example from ESPN and the NBA, which last week streamed clips from an NBA game accompanied by commercials for the upcoming blockbuster After Earth, among other advertisers:
Roy Hibbert's BIG block. One of the nicest you'll see #NBARapidReplay - on.nba.com/Z4vJmb— NBA (@NBA) May 19, 2013
Additional media partners now include A&E, BBC America, Conde Nast, Discovery, Fox, Major League Baseball and the WWE. A full list of media partners is available here.
The ads promise to help advertisers extend their messages beyond broadcasters' TV audiences to reach their Twitter followers as well. They'll also serve to remind Twitter users to tune in, Glenn Brown, Twitter's director of promoted content and sponsorships, said in a blog post.
In addition to Amplify, Twitter also announced plans to begin testing TV ad targeting with select partners. Using a new TV Ads dashboard, Twitter claims those partners will be able to target their messages, in the form of Promoted Tweets, to Twitter users who have already seen their ads on TV.