After Monday night’s thrilling Raptors-Cavaliers showdown, it’s clear there are still lots of exciting moments to come in the series – and many of them will be seen on Twitter.
NBA Canada has partnered with Samsung Canada to bring fans live highlights during the NBA playoffs and finals. The NBA Canada Twitter account has begun sharing highlight clips from games with a seven second Samsung pre-roll advertisement. The partnership comes via the Twitter Amplify program, which Twitter launched in 2015.
“[Amplify] is about bringing real-time highlights that happen around the world onto Twitter and having brands be a part of that content experience,” explains Ivan Pehar, head of sales at Twitter Canada.
The Samsung-NBA partnership marks the first of its kind in Canada. The major electronics company edited down a number of TV advertisements for the new Galaxy S7 to better suit the online format provided by Twitter. Pehar notes that the brief clips are the perfect length for highlight reels that typically range from 15 seconds to two minutes. Additionally, he said that not all highlight clips will feature the Samsung ad, only a specific few.
By partnering with the NBA itself instead of a specific franchise, Samsung has access to advertise on footage from all games instead of only one team. Also, since the NBA owns all of that content, there are fewer legal considerations when sharing content in real-time.
The campaign has received varying levels of success, largely depending on timing. One tweet featuring footage of Raptor’s centre Bismack Biyombo received over 1,000 likes and almost 800 retweets.
Additionally, Twitter Amplify allows advertisers to target specific groups of users. Pehar explains that they can promote the tweet to Twitter users on Samsung devices, or people engaging with hashtags used for NBA teams. The campaign was launched last week, and will continue for the rest of the NBA playoffs and finals. There are also plans to continue the partnership next season.
Kyle Lowry was on 🔥🔥🔥 from start to finish in Game 4! #PlayerOfTheGamehttps://t.co/uD4GGLkoOI
— NBA Canada (@NBACanada) May 24, 2016
