Twitter has hired Baljeet Singh, a five-year YouTube veteran who led development of several key advertising projects for the Internet video site, to head up TV and video initiatives for the social-media company.
Singh’s mandate: to bring more video to Twitter via partnerships with TV networks and other video producers, and develop new products for selling ads against that content, according to Twitter.
Singh, who started Monday at Twitter as product director in charge of TV and video, reports to VP of revenue products Kevin Weil. Singh also will work with Glenn Brown, senior director of Twitter Amplify, the company’s ad program to let content producers sell sponsorships in promoted tweets, according to a rep.
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On the video front, Twitter has focused on building partnerships with broadcast and cable TV networks through the Amplify program. The social company, which went public last November, has signed pacts with the four big broadcasters, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, with ABC’s partnership kicking with the Oscars last week. Other Twitter Amplify media partners include ESPN, Turner Sports and the NBA, Viacom, BBC America, The Weather Channel, A+E Networks, Discovery Communications and Major League Baseball.
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Twitter last year bought Vine, which had developed an app for posting six-second videos distributed on the social service.
At YouTube, Singh built AdWords for Video, a tool for advertisers to buy ad space on YouTube and third-party publishers in a TV-like fashion. He also helped develop TrueView, YouTube’s ad unit that gives users the option of skipping a preroll spot.
Most recently at YouTube, Singh was global head of partnerships for educational and family-oriented content. Before that, he was YouTube’s group product manager responsible for all advertiser-facing initiatives.
Singh came to YouTube through Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, which was completed in 2008.
