X Expands Partnership with IAS on Vertical Video Ad Placement

With many misleading data points that X’s team (previously known as Twitter) has communicated since Elon Musk took ownership of the app, it is seemingly designed to give the impression that the platform is performing better.

Thus, new data from X come up, as part of a broader announcement of a new partnership with IAS (Integral Ad Science) on brand safety for vertical video ad placements.

According to X:

“A growing number of users are actively watching and posting videos on X, fueling the platform’s rapid expansion. X is now a video-first platform, with video being part of more than 8 in 10 user sessions, and we’ve seen views increase almost 30% year over year.”

Here we see that even the statement, is unclear because it doesn’t provide enough context as to what that means. Is that overall video views or video views on average? In the past, you could ask Twitter’s comms department for clarity, but now, X doesn’t even have a communications team, so there’s no way of knowing what these figures represent.

In addition, based on these numbers, video content is getting more attention in the app, while the platform claims that more than 100 million people prefer to watch vertical video on the platform.

“Vertical video is the fastest growing surface on X. Over 100M people around the world are consuming vertical video daily at an average of over 13 minutes per day. On many days, vertical video accounts for around 20% of all time spent on the platform.”

This can make sense when viewed in broader content, as the behavioral shift towards vertical video, led by TikTok and Instagram, would lend itself to similar trends in other apps.

Thus, X’s video player doesn’t open to the vertical player natively, with most users viewing video in-stream. And given X sees 244 million daily activities in total, that’s a lot of people that it claims are specifically tapping into video clips to view them, then scrolling through its video-specific feed.

Further, X is now looking to provide more assurance for brands looking to display their ads within this vertical video feed. The new feature will be effective as of February 1^st, 2024.

X stated:

“Effective February 1, 2024, X will expand access to our successfully vetted inventory pilot with Integral Ad Science, a leading global media measurement and optimization platform, to all US advertisers. In this partnership, IAS classifies all Vertical Video Ad adjacencies for brand safety and suitability aligned to the GARM framework.”

X says that this will give vertical video advertisers “maximum control over where their ads appear”. This is important, given that a growing number of brands are pulling back on X ad spend, ostensibly due to brand safety concerns.

However, those concerns are arguably more centered on Musk’s comments than ad placement. In addition, X also says that it’s hired more staff in its brand safety team to reinforce this element.

It’s hard to gauge what exactly is going on with the platform, due to the various contradicting and misleading data points being shared and/or amplified by Yaccarino and Musk at different times.

For instance, back in October 2023, Yaccarino (CEO of Twitter) claimed that X users were spending an average of 32 minutes per day in the app, but based on recent data shared by Musk, it’s more like 23 minutes per day instead. This may not seem like a wide discrepancy on the surface, but that’s a variance in engagement of around 30%.

Elon has also continued to amplify misleading data points, like website traffic numbers, as a means to suggest that X is outperforming Instagram and Facebook in traffic. X does generate a significant amount more visits via web browsers, as opposed to IG and FB, which see some 90% of their activity in-app.

pic.twitter.com/rVqC0ohqSb

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2023

The framing of these stats seems like a deliberate attempt to mislead, and as a result, it makes it harder to trust all of X’s reported figures.

As a result, if you are using the platform, it is better to discount the broader numbers and focus instead on the specific engagement that you’re seeing, in the app.

If your target audience is active on X, and brands or influencers in your niche post vertical videos in the app, then you should experiment with the same and see if it works for your strategic goals.

You can learn more here

Source: Social Media Today

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