Has Twitter’s new Amplify made it the social medium that works best with TV ads?

Twitter is opening up its TV ad targeting service Amplify to all national US TV advertisers following what seems to have been a successful series of trials.

In essence it claims that Amplify, er, amplifies a campaign by tweeting to people interested in the programme or brand. And, because users of Twitter are concerned with publicity for themselves rather than privacy, everybody, presumably, should be happy (or not too unhappy anyway).

Twitter product manager revenue Michael Fleischman says: “During a handful of studies, users who Twitter identified as being exposed on TV and then engaged with a Promoted Tweet demonstrate 95 percent stronger message association and 58 percent higher purchase intent compared to users identified as being exposed on TV alone.”

Tech site TechCrunch notes: “Twitter’s targeting could let businesses create a marketing narrative that tells a deeper, more interactive story than a commercial locked inside your TV can.”

So what’s not to like? On the face of it, not very much. Twitter does seem to lend itself to promotions of various kinds more easily than, say, Facebook where privacy (for some, anyway) is the overriding concern.

Facebook currently takes about five times as much ad revenue as Twitter but that could change quite rapidly if enough advertisers come to see Amplify as an essential way of maximising their TV investment.

‘Two is better than one’ is a much better pitch in the media market than ‘Either/Or.’