Twitter Now Running Pre-Roll Ads

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By Todd Wasserman2013-11-15 14:59:14 UTC

Twitter's post-IPO monetization quest continues with a new unit that runs ads from American Express before video snippets from Fox programming.

The brand will run such ads before videos from Fox shows including Glee, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and So You Think You Can Dance, among other shows, Jean Rossi, EVP of sales for Fox Broadcasting, told Variety . The first such ads launched last week.

See also: The Great Display Advertising Cash-In of 2013

Twitter began running Fox clips as part of Amplify, a program that brought sponsored clips to users' news feeds in May. As Gawker points out, that means that the AmEx ads are, in effect, ads on top of ads.

Though Twitter's IPO was considered successful, the company is not expected to post a profit until 2015 at the earliest. Since the company's main source of revenues comes from advertising, Twitter has to walk a fine line between pleasing advertisers without compromising the user experience.

Twitter's recent expansion of photos in timelines was one recent test of this middle path as Promoted Tweets suddenly got more real estate in the feed. Twitter isn't alone in testing the boundaries for users' tolerance for advertising; Instagram also recently introduced ads and Google has been testing banner ads for brand searches.

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Image: Getty/ David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Topics: Advertising, Business, Fox, Twitter