Twitter Brings Pre-Roll Ads to Periscope Streams

Taking another step to monetize live video, Twitter introduced pre-roll ads for Periscope streams Tuesday. These ads work very much like the ones you’ve seen play before regular videos on Twitter, but appear ahead of Periscope live streams and archived Periscope broadcasts.

Periscope pre-roll ads are initially limited to select advertisers, but are supposed to become more widely available in the coming months.

Periscope’s group project manager Mike Folgner touted these pre-roll ads as a new way for publishers to monetize their live streams in a blog post published Tuesday morning. Folgner also wrote that the move will make more ad inventory available to advertisers.

The announcement follows the launch of Periscope’s Producer API last week, which allows broadcasters and other professional content producers to stream their live video feeds via Periscope without the need to use a phone.

Both announcements clearly signal that Twitter aims to win over commercial live streamers and have them use Periscope, as opposed to platforms like Facebook Live, for their programming.

Interestingly, Twitter has a bit of a different approach towards live video monetization than Facebook. The latter company began to offer publishers an option for live video mid-roll ads in February, but has thus far eschewed pre-roll advertising.

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