The opportunities presented by online video have changed the playing field dramatically for news publishers. Publishers are now evolving from world-class newspapers to world-class media companies. For insights on the state of digital publishing, the Brightcove APAC team attended the Online Video Advertising Strategies 2016 (VIDAS 2016) event in Singapore recently. Below are four notable recipes for success discussed at the event:
Revenue Through Sponsored or Branded Content
Online video advertising has become the fastest growing digital ad format with video ads driving an average click-through rate (CTR) of 1.84%, the highest click-through rate of all digital ad formats. According to comScore, the average user spends 16 minutes and 49 seconds watching video advertisements per month. However, the next big revenue opportunity is the rise of sponsored and branded content.
Coconuts Media, a fast-growing Asian regional news network, monetises their online content through a subtle sponsored content strategy. From branded page overlays to product placements, Coconuts Media advocates the importance of being non-interruptive with adverts, in order to balance delivering ad impressions for advertisers with a pleasing experience for consumers.
Go Where the Millennials Are
Media publishers have recognised that they need to ensure a strong presence on a wide range of platforms and devices to reach their audiences, specifically millennials. USA Today recently reported 50% annual growth in video views from social media, which underscores that social media has become one of the first mediums for viewers to discover news content. The Washington Post also noted that 39% of their total digital audience is comprised of millennials, of which 46% access their content via smartphones. With millennials representing a significant portion of their audiences, publishers realise that they need to not only have significant presences on Twitter and Facebook — but also on platforms like Snapchat — as social media becomes the primary channel for millennials to get their news.
Keep Viewers Engaged by Recommending “Next Best”
In a bid to keep viewers engaged and increase their time on site, publishers discussed using recommendation engines to serve up the next relevant video to the viewer as they complete their current video view. Another approach is to enable viewers to rate video news clips, with a thumbs up or thumbs down option, to further engage the viewer and drive traffic to highly rated video clips. Brightcove partner IRIS.TV is an in-stream video recommendation engine designed to create personalised streams of video keeping audiences watching. Publishers that have integrated IRIS.TV into their video players typically see increases in both viewing length and frequency.
Silent Auto-Play Videos Are A Hit
Silent auto-play videos have become increasingly popular on Facebook and Instagram, and that has piqued publishers’ interest. These videos start auto-playing silently in the social media news feeds as people scroll through but only plays audio when a user clicks on it. The beauty of the silent auto-play videos is that they are measured using a click-to-plays metric, which is a more meaningful way for publishers to accurately track interest and engagement levels with their viewers. When viewers take the action to click-to-play the video with sound, it is a strong indicator that the video content is relevant and interesting.
As publishers continue their evolution into world-class media companies, they are beginning to adopt the mindset of a digital-first organisation. With video at the crux of this transition, we are seeing more and more publishers ramping up their resources to produce, distribute, measure, and monetise more video content than ever before.
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