Twitter hires former YouTube exec to lead video ads

10 Mar 2014

Twitter has hired former YouTube executive Baljeet Singh as the social network’s product director to push its new line of video advertisements.

The Verge reported Singh will lead Twitter’s video-sharing future, which will include letting its users find and watch videos, creating easier partnerships with companies to post their videos on the site and finally to use Twitter’s Amplify advertising programme to sell more adverts with videos on people’s feeds.

Singh was one of the video-sharing website’s top people in terms of revenue-generating video software and has been the person behind YouTube’s introduction of the skippable video adverts that appear before a video.

Speaking about his new role to The Verge, Singh said he sees great potential in Twitter.

“There’s all this tremendous conversation that happens around TV content and online content — and all that conversation is happening on Twitter.”

Video-advert revenue is an increasingly profitable business for websites, as consumers have been more likely to see a video ad.

In 2013, YouTube’s estimated video advert revenue was US$5.6bn in 2013, which had grown from US$2bn in 2011.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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