A recent study from the Reuters Institute found that website users, in particular, remain resistant to online video news – with only around 2.5% of average visit time spent on video pages, in a range of 30 online news sites; 97.5% of time is still spent with text. Meanwhile, off-site news video consumption is growing fast. For many publishers, most their videos are consumed on Facebook and other social platforms. For 60% of Facebook users, the News Feed is their primary source for news, due to the personalization at scale.
Not only are people watching more online video, it has been clearly demonstrated that people are willing to buy following their watching a video advertisement. Research shows the purchase intent of US internet users is 64% when viewing pre-roll video ads on a smartphone (a group that’s often on the go). And as digital video ads are better targeted than traditional TV, they generate better results, explaining the shift from TV to digital video advertising.
Targeting and personalization are key to drive video consumption for publishers. But can digital publishers compete with the personalization at scale of Facebook?
Yes, they can:
- Many personalization solutions personalize based on consumed video content only. But that is just 2.5% of content consumed. The vast majority is (still) text articles. Combine the consumption of all content consumed to target and recommend content, see also this post.
- As 97.5% is spent on non-video content, promote your video content. Bias on video content in your recommendations on article pages
- Bias on video content in your personalized newsletters.
- Include videos in your topic pages
- Include videos in your related content
- Offer users to follow videos or text
- And … obviously, high quality in-player recommendations
To sum it all up: do not consider video as “another channel” – video should be treated as just another form of content and should be blended with all the other great content you publish.
Have more questions? Get in touch with our team to know more about the embedded Personalized Recommendations and other services that you can use to enrich your videos and engage your visitors better.