Twitter Fleet: Twitter’s version of stories – Fleet – came to India about a year ago while it was still in testing and in November, it was officially rolled out by the social media company. However, one thing that differentiated Twitter’s Fleet from Instagram’s Stories were advertisements. On Facebook-owned Instagram, while viewing stories of friends, people also get numerous Stories containing ads in between. Now, Twitter is also looking to bring ads to its Fleet. The company has announced that it is beginning the pilot testing of ads in Fleet in the US. This would mark the entry of full-screen vertical ads to the platform, bringing it in better competition with other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.
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Much like what happens on Instagram, the Fleet ads would be displayed in between Fleets of people a user follows, and these would be in 9:16 format. It would also be able to include a call-to-action by adding a “swipe up” link in their ads. However, unlike Instagram and TikTok, which allow ads up to 120 seconds and 60 seconds respectively, Twitter is sticking to best practices and would allow video ads of up to 30 seconds.
However, the microblogging site has not yet disclosed the frequency with which users would see ads when swiping through Fleets and has only said that as it monitors how users engage with these ads, it would innovate, test as well as adapt this feature.
Meanwhile, for advertisers, the site is offering the standard ad metrics that it already does, including impressions, clicks, website visits, profile visits, etc. Moreover for video ads, video views, 6s video views, starts, completes, quartile reporting, etc would be part of the metrics to help advertisers understand the duration for which they are able to hold the attention of the audience.
At present, only 10 advertisers in the US are being involved in the pilot testing, including players in tech, retail and dining.
