Twitter, NBA Score Deal For Basketball Game Highlights, Ads In Tweets

Twitter’s expansion into the wider content world beyond 140-characters continues with news today that it will be showing highlights of NBA playoff games inside tweets. And, as Bloomberg reports, the deal also includes video ads that will show along with the highlight videos.

The NBA will post highlights from the current NBA playoffs using the #NBARapidReplay hashtag, and ads will show from sponsors including Sprint Nextel, Taco Bell and Sony Pictures.

Adam Bain, Twitter’s head of global revenue, declined to discuss financial details with Bloomberg.

Earlier this week, Twitter and ESPN announced an expansion of a similar, existing deal in which ESPN shows game highlights in tweets and sells ads to its sponsors that are included with the video content. According to the WSJ, ESPN’s advertisers also commit to buying Promoted Tweets directly from Twitter.

Twitter is increasingly seen as the default “second screen” for TV viewers that also like to use social media to follow programs with others that are watching at the same time. A recent study on the correlation between tweets and TV ratings suggested that an increase in Twitter conversation can lead to higher TV ratings. Twitter also recently bought Bluefin Labs to grow its social TV offerings, and previously revealed a partnership with Nielsen to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating, the first industry-standard metric for second-screen activity.