Flipboard To Join Facebook And Instagram With Video Ads This September

Social reading service Flipboard said Wednesday that it will start displaying video ads in September, following in the footsteps of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which is now beta testing the idea. Speaking at Read Write's ReadWriteMix event in San Francisco, Flipboard founder and CEO Mike McCue said the first brand to sign on is French fashion brand Chanel.

The Palo Alto, California-based magazine aggregator joins other social networks already utilizing, or planning to use, the video ad format in a bid to drive more traffic to brands that have customized magazines on its social platform. The idea is similar to how some companies use Facebook ads to drive traffic to their pages on the social network. Ken Yeung, strategy and research content lead at Orange Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay area division of the French telecommunications company, was at the mixer and tweeted that Flipboard's initial video advertiser was Chanel.

McCue told Read Write that studies from data analytics company Nielsen concluded that advertising on Flipboard is more effective than television commercials. The company now uses existing static, full-page ads that comprise roughly 1 of every 10 pages on the app, McCue has said. The Next Web noted that it'll be interesting to see how video changes the company's engagement rate.

Facebook rolled out its own video ads in December, one month after its image-sharing network, Instagram. Twitter says it will begin auto-play video ads later this year.