Twitter finally embraced autoplay for videos and GIFs. In a recent blog post, the company announced that as users scroll through Tweets they will now see muted video content. Clicked videos will play on a new screen.

Brands will be eager to use this feature for sponsored content. Twitter also clarified certain issues for interested customers. Videos will be billed as played only if they are viewed for longer than 3 seconds. And there is another condition: In order to be counted as played, the video must be fully visible on played device, meaning fully fit the screen.

Twitter also revealed some data that shows the superiority of autoplay over click-to-play:

• People prefer autoplay videos to other viewing methods 2.5 times more.
• Autoplay has 14% better video recall rate over other video formats.
• People complete watching promoted videos 7 times more on autoplay.

The data on autoplay looks more than promising. We will see if the new feature will deliver the engagement it promises.