Twitter finds a way to make some money with in-ad tweet deal

Not content to just launch a music discovery service and companion iOS app this week, Twitter has paired with BBC America to provide video ads embedded into tweets.

BBC America and Twitter inked an advertising deal, only days after the real-time social service was rumored to be in similar talks with NBCUniversal and Viacom.

Best known for shows like Doctor Who and Top Gear, BBC America confirmed the deal with a tweet of its own, while promising more "details to come" on its Tumblr page.

The tweet describes the deal as the first to offer "in-Tweet branded video synced to entertainment TV series" following an earlier Twitter experiment with the March Madness basketball.

How it works

As described by AllThingsD, the advertising model allows content owners to post a brief video clip via Twitter, which is paid up-front for its distribution and promotion services.

Revenue generated by the ads are then split between Twitter and the content owner, offering the microblogging service a far more lucrative slice of the television advertising pie.

Of course, there's nothing preventing TV networks from posting video content to Twitter even without a deal in place, but the social network may have at least one trump card up its sleeve.

As part of a $90 million purchase of data startup Bluefin Labs earlier this year, Twitter can now provide advertisers with valuable consumer data on which TV shows are hot, which can then in turn be used to better target those advertising dollars on the same service.