As time goes on, more and more regional publishers are seeing the value of incorporating video into their content strategy. Doing so comes with a variety of benefits—such as reaching their audiences in engaging new ways—but also brings new challenges. Read on to hear how Condé Nast Italia and Italiaonline learned to overcome these hurdles to increase video monetization and provide a better viewer experience.
Condé Nast Italia
Italy’s leading media publishing company, Condé Nast Italia, has 10 successful print properties—as well as six digital properties for its most popular brands. The company’s most recent brand acquisition, La Cucina Italiana, is already one of its most successful digital properties, receiving three million unique visitors each month.
When Condé Nast Italia made its first foray into digital publishing, its entire monetization strategy revolved around display advertisements. The team quickly realized the downfall of this approach: It prevented them from earning any additional ad revenue from their video content. And, unfortunately, the company was losing up to half of its annual advertising revenue due to ad blockers.
Marco Viganò, digital chief technology officer of Condé Nast Italia, considered the challenges at hand and sought out a solution that would enable him to mitigate ad blockers, maintain an effective ad monetization strategy, and streamline workflow. He found that solution in server-side ad insertion (SSAI), a mechanism that dynamically stitches targeted ads into your content—delivering one continuous stream. The three main value propositions of SSAI are ad blocker prevention, increased device reach, and improved user experience. By leveraging Brightcove’s SSAI solution, Condé Nast Italia is on track to reduce its ad inventory loss by a whopping 80 percent.
Italiaonline
Italy’s biggest internet company, Italiaonline, dominates the country’s online publishing scene. Though the company was originally ahead of the curve by making video a cornerstone of its business, the rest of the industry eventually caught on. Soon, Italiaonline needed to do more than simply deliver video content. Viewers started demanding a top-of-the-line experience, while advertisers called for publishers to improve click-through rates, completion rates, and viewability.
By partnering with Brightcove, Italiaonline was able to continue to lead the way with monetization and viewability. With Dynamic Delivery, the publisher was able to implement an effective solution to their video latency challenges. This technology ensures that all viewers see content that is optimized for their viewing device and bandwidth—with minimum delays in playback.
In addition, Italiaonline developed an efficient, streamlined advertising stack solution. Doing so empowered the publisher to optimize their fill rate across both programmatic and direct channels, and increase competition amongst demand sources.
In an effort to improve viewability, Italiaonline also developed a custom plugin to handle floating/anchored video player features and video start/pause when the player is in view and out of view—as well as a smart adapter for managing autoplay features. By introducing these video playlists, Italiaonline was able to boost their user engagement metrics.
For regional publishers, video represents a major opportunity area, but comes with its own unique challenges—from ad blockers to video latency. But, by putting the right solutions and strategies in place, companies like Condé Nast Italia and Italiaonline are overcoming the hurdles that stand in the way of their video success. Get inspired by their stories and learn more about how to provide beautiful, profitable video experiences.
For more ad strategy best practices, check out the recordings of our two recent webinars: Jumpstart Your Video Advertising Strategy and Let’s Talk Fill Rate.
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