50shades-screenshotTL-pngAs a part of its ongoing quest to monetize its social networking service, Twitter announced Tuesday that it’s rolling out Promoted Video advertising for companies that want to get a clip in front of more users.

Companies will now be able to pay Twitter for the ability to promote tweets that feature video content like previews of a television show, sports highlights and film trailers. The whole system will be run through the company’s Amplify service, which provides brands and media companies with a way to show off video content inside Twitter’s website and mobile apps.

Working with Amplify will allow Twitter to provide advertisers with in-depth analytics about their video ads, including how many people completed watching the video and the percentage of organic versus paid views the video received. In addition, advertisers can choose to pay for their ad campaigns on a Cost Per View basis, meaning that they won’t get charged unless a user chooses to watch the ad they’ve been presented with.

The new advertising product comes after Twitter rolled out a Video Card for tweets earlier this year. According to the company, tweets with videos in them saw more engagement from users than tweets without videos. Clearly, the company is hoping that advertisers will see greater returns reaching out to customers with video than with standard promoted tweets.

Right now, the Promoted Video tweets are only available on a beta basis to select advertisers on Twitter. Companies interested in using the new ad unit can reach out to their account representative at Twitter to see about getting in on the action.

Video ads have become a hot topic in the social networking arena.

Facebook recently developed auto-playing video ads that will play when they appear in a user’s News Feed, though they haven’t been rolled out on a large scale.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.