Chances are, you've experienced some version of this. Whether on YouTube, binge-watching on Netflix, or some other type of video feed. We all know video is a highly engaging form of content, especially when personalized to our own tastes.
These 'rabbit holes,' when we're highly engaged with video recommendations, are the focus of Video Discovery, opening up new revenue opportunities for the industry.
Let’s take a deep dive into Video Discovery and why it's taken the ad tech world by storm.
The Power of Video
Video is the most accessible and powerful type of content for advertising on the web. In 2020, 96% of consumers increased their online video consumption, and 9 out of 10 viewers said they wanted to see more video from brands and businesses.
- A 2021 report by Wyzowl revealed that 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 93% of marketers say it's an important part of their marketing strategy.
- According to Cisco's Forecasts for 2021, global internet video traffic will grow 4-fold from 2016 to 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 31%.
- Total global online video traffic will be 80% of all internet traffic in 2021.
Video has become the most popular choice for content consumption. A whopping 3 trillion minutes (5 million years) of video content will cross the internet each month in 2021. That's 1 million minutes of video streamed or downloaded every second.
So there's a lot of video content out there, but offering the right video is the key to real monetization. That’s where Video Discovery comes in, enabling publishers to recommend personalized video content in real-time.
Why Video Discovery is Better
When you show users videos that interest them, they're more likely to stay on the page longer. Video Discovery done right is an engagement-driven video unit that recommends relevant video by scanning the page's content and offering a playlist of videos that score high for metrics, such as; contextual matching and engagement rate using real-time data. Users can interact with the player, watch or skip videos, depending on what they find the most interesting.
The 5 Principles of Video Discovery:
- Drive users to Consume more videos - With an extensive video library full of content from top content creators. Publishers can control the categories, channels, and keywords to best fit their site.
- Monetize new inventory - Increase monthly video impressions and preroll opportunities.
- Measure to optimize - Use a Discovery Engine that scores every video in real-time according to engagement data and contextual relevance.
- Work with Trustworthy partners - Brands only appear in a safe environment and comply with the latest industry regulations.
- Use tech that Simplifies - An interactive experience that allows users to engage and watch the entire length of a video without breaks or being shown an ad. Videos that don't lead to engagement are skipped to allow users to discover the next video.
Tackling Scale, Placement, and Content Production
Publishers spend a lot of time and resources creating and producing videos but often don't scale them enough to deliver a decent ROI. Video can be expensive, and distribution has to be even more effective to keep production costs manageable. Videos that don't reach the right people aren't worth the cost.
But to provide good content distribution requires more than just a tech solution. Playing a publisher's own video alongside a playlist pulled from an extensive library of video content from popular, brand-safe content creators creates the optimal environment to engage users. Publishers can further increase monetizing opportunities by placing the unit throughout their site, recommending the most relevant videos for each page of content while including their own video in different playlists.
"YouTube, Facebook, Hulu – you name it – they all invest heavily in tech to match the most suitable recommendation to each user, to increase consumption. At Primis, we help our publishers do precisely that but on their own sites. Our tech uses; contextual matching, engagement metrics, and machine learning algorithms to match every user with the best content – for them. Allowing publishers to provide a better user experience, improve customer retention and create a sustainable revenue stream." - Eyal Bezalel, Co-CEO, Primis
The player's placement can be optimized depending on the page the unit is on; this not only increases viewability and the likelihood of users engaging with video, but it actually enhances user experience. It means the player may appear above the fold in certain sections of the site and lower down in other parts. Having the player placed throughout the site provides a seamless omnichannel video experience for users who associate the site with video and come to expect it.
Takeaways: Publishers, Advertisers, and Users All Stand to Profit
Users want video, and with the enormous amount out there, publishers need to provide a player that recommends videos from high-quality, brand-safe channels that users already know and love and allows them to discover and control what they want to watch. A good Video Discovery platform takes all of this into account, benefitting everybody. Publishers are given an easy way to match their content with the right user and create more ad inventory with higher CPMs. Advertisers can target relevant users while appearing next to high-quality, brand-safe content, and users get to view great content that they're actually interested in, in a non-intrusive way. A win, win, win situation and a better way to do video.
