In doing so the social network is following the lead of Facebook and Google.

Twitter Inc. has begun to automatically play the videos and video ads that appear in users’ timelines when they scroll down their feeds.

Twitter’s video ads, which it calls Promoted Videos, let a marketer pay to increase the prominence of a post containing a video in much the same way advertisers use Twitter’s Promoted Tweet ad unit.

When a user scrolls through his timeline and sees a video GIF or Vine, the muted content will automatically play. If he clicks on the video, the video will expand to take up the users’ full screen with sound. Users can retweet, favorite or comment on the video at any point.

Twitter also is changing the way it charges for video ads by only charging marketers when the video is completely visible on a user’s screen and has been watched for at least 3 seconds. “We’re putting this standard of 100% viewability in place because we think it’s simply the right thing to do,” David Regan, Twitter’s senior product manager, writes in a blog post. “If a video is not 100% in-view, we don’t think an advertiser should be charged.”

That approach aims to go beyond the guidelines issued last year by the trade groups Media Ratings Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau that suggested an online video should considered “viewable” if at least half of the ad is visible on a user’s screen for at least 2 seconds. By surpassing the guidelines, Twitter aims to attract ad dollars away from Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., which charge premiums for their autoplaying video ad units. However, the guidelines suggested that the 50% standard was in place because the technology is not yet able to accurately gauge whether a video ad was seen, says Randall Rothenberg, IAB’s president and CEO. “100% is currently unreasonable,” he says. “Why? Because different ad units, browsers, ad placements, vendors and measurement methodologies yield wildly different viewability numbers.”

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In introducing autoplay videos, Twitter also increased the size of videos in the timeline. The social network says doing so led more consumers to interact with videos. “During the autoplay testswe ran, we saw people engaging with videos in this new format at a much higher rate, and our brand and publishing partners saw improved view rates,” Regan writes. “All of this resulted in lower cost-per-views for marketers and increased video recall by consumers.”

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