Facebook has seen a lot of success with their auto-play video feature, and it seems that Twitter is looking to follow suit. While they aren’t likely to get the same 4 billion video views per day that Facebook is enjoying, it will certainly dramatically improve the level of engagement with their site.
With this change Twitter is adjusting the Twitter timeline to show large videos for an improved user experience. These videos will work with Vines, GIFs and regular videos as well. As soon as the video is on the screen, it will begin to play muted. If someone wants to hear the audio they will need to click or tap on it to un-mute. One unique feature for mobile devices, however, is that if the video is playing and they tilt the device sideways it will automatically go full screen and un-mute.
For advertisers who use video on Twitter, they will only be charged when the videos are 100% in-view for the user for a minimum of three seconds. This is the same standard for time visible that Facebook offers.
While auto-play videos can get a bad rep for being distracting or annoying, surveys have shown that most people prefer them. They are also about 7x more likely to get fully watched, according to tests run by brands using video ads. This is clearly a huge benefit and one of the reasons all marketers should be happy that Twitter is making this change.
