With more employees working from home and families isolated, internet use and media consumption grew significantly. Online publishers saw dramatic increases in anything coronavirus related as people sought the latest information. Also, users sought out an unprecedented level of video and entertainment options.  

Significant Increases in Video Consumption

News sites saw a 30.9% increase from February to March. Entertainment content, social media, and online video all saw big jumps in consumption. Nielsen predicts that all these people staying at home can lead to a nearly 60% increase in the amount of video content being watched.

Educational companies do not stay behind: a recent report from LearnPlatform has shown that educational services saw up to a 500 percent increase in web traffic during mid-March. This is not far from the over 300 percent increase in children’s (including educational) website traffic we’ve experienced on the Primis network.

Leveraging Video Consumption Growth During Unprecedented Times

Across verticals, there has been a significant change in the supply and demand aspects of digital advertising. While overall digital ad spending has declined, video advertising has been less affected. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reports that video advertising will see some of the smallest declines in the coming months as advertisers shift spending.  

There’s an opportunity to increase revenue from video if you act right now.  While other types of media saw major downturns in advertising dollars, digital video advertising weathered the storm better in the start of Q2.  Tracking ad buys, the IAB expects spending on video ads to increase by 27% in May and June compared to March and April spending.

The opportunity is there for those who are ready to embrace it.  That means using the right technology and the right video provider that will optimize performance and user experience.

How You Can Leverage Video Even During Difficult Operating Conditions

Together with the increase in traffic and consumption, came along a considerable growth in costs. The Khan Academy, an authority in the educational industry, reported a five-fold growth in traffic, which resulted in a considerable increase in their expenses.

While most publishers are using video, many lack the expertise or technology to maximize the opportunity. That is why many publishers keep doing what they were doing before the pandemic, only with declining advertising budgets. And as many are operating under difficult work conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak, employees have been stretched thin and have even less time to optimize video.

That’s where video solutions really come into play. While you’re dealing with increased demands on your staff during the coronavirus pandemic, these companies can optimize your video activity to maximize your results. Moreover, Video discovery offers technology that allows a publisher’s video ad unit to recommend relevant video content actively. The Video Discovery Engine automatically recommends relevant video content that viewers will be interested in.

Built-in monetization, editorial automation and accurate targeting of users interests are the main elements of video discovery that help free up your editorial team, as well as your adops crew. When users are presented with the most suitable videos, it increases engagement, time on site, view-through rates (VTRs), and revenue opportunities without any additional work on your part. It queues contextually relevant video using artificial intelligence to serve videos most likely to convert. 

Additionally, they should incur all of the costs associated with scaling video, including the player itself, ad serving costs as well as the costly video bandwidth. These elements make video discovery perfectly suited to dealing with the explosion in video consumption.

In conclusion, although some of the reasons why video consumption is up are not pleasant, the fact remains that now is an important time to make sure that your monetization is working at peak efficiency. If we can help with that, let us know.

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