A new way to buy video ads on Twitter has effectively ‘solved’ the viewability problem that advertisers have long struggled with on digital media, while users of TikTok can now shop within the app for products associated with its sponsored Hashtag Challenges.

Twitter latest ad offering includes a bid unit for assets of 15 seconds in length or shorter, with advertisers only charged when their ads are viewed for at least six seconds, with 50% of pixels in view.

The use of such short-form ads is already widespread on social media but advertisers are now able to pay only for those people watch to the end.

“It is equivalent to a completed view if you’re running 6-second ads,” said Dan Kang, group product manager at Twitter, in remarks reported by Ad Age.

The new bid type is more expensive than the others Twitter offers, Kang acknowledged. “But the gains that you get in terms of an uplift in completion rates and an uplift in engagement rates, it far outweighs the incremental costs,” he argued.

The accompanying use case on the Twitter blog cited Dell Brazil which increased its view rate by 22%, but some observers wondered what might be the effect on brand metrics of the 50% in-view positioning of the creative compared to the 100% of other bid types.

Meanwhile, short-form video platform TikTok has added a new e-commerce feature, Hashtag Challenge Plus, to sit alongside existing brand-sponsored Hashtag Challenges and allow users to buy products featured within those campaigns.

US grocer Kroger has already utilised this facility, but, according to TechCrunch, the shoppable experience offered “is really just a mobile-optimized Kroger website pointing to a special search term (btscollege19). It isn’t a TikTok creation, nor built with TikTok’s help.”

Sourced from Ad Age, AdWeek, TechCrunch, Twitter; additional content by WARC staff