Baby Boomers grew up with TV, VHS tapes, and DVDs to watch video. For the younger generation, it’s been all about digital video. 66% of teenagers (age 13-19) watch videos online every day. For tweens (age 8-12), 56% watch digital video daily.
These digital natives are consuming a lot of videos.
Big Expectations, Big Winners
This new generation of video consumers has big expectations. They have become accustomed to high-quality video and seamless functionality. It’s provided a significant advantage for the big players who provide that experience. As video usage continues to increase, publishers will need to match those expectations if they hope to compete.
Smart players are finding ways to target this new generation using platforms like Tik Tok. The big players in the online world have developed their own video platforms to target younger viewers. Facebook has Lasso. YouTube is rolling out Shorts. Instagram serves up snackable videos.
As this generation ages, the opportunity to engage digitally-native consumers will continue to grow. Content creators that act now to improve their video delivery have the best opportunity to engage and monetize their content in the future.
It’s not just the younger set that has embraced digital video. Video consumption is growing exponentially across all age groups. 78% of people watch video online at least weekly and 55% of those watch every day.
Delivering A Quality Video Experience
The shifting expectations and surfing habits of users call for a change of editorial and monetization strategies from publishers. While focusing on well-written articles and sprinkling a few videos between them used to be enough, now it will send users straight to the hands of the players who provide the quality video experience users are accustomed to.
However, change is also an opportunity, for those who seize it. While many publishers understand the need, not many manage to shift in the right way. Making video a focus of the publishing strategy is necessary, but it is not enough. Simple straightforward methods like “create more videos”, or “create better videos” just won’t cut it. What is needed is a holistic approach, rethinking everything from scratch to deliver a quality video experience from a to z.
Maximize Your Opportunity with Video
We have gathered 4 basic concepts that will help you answer the questions of “what, where, when and how” when it comes to creating a good video experience. These will help you maximize your opportunity to leverage a new audience that is looking to discover and consume more video than ever before.
Video on Every Page
It’s said that a website’s home page is its front door. In 2020, however, more people are coming in through the side door, backdoor, or crawling in the windows. Most traffic comes from referral engines, such as social media or search.
That means most visitors will find your content on an inside page or landing page. That’s an important reason why you need to have video on every page of your website, because you can’t always anticipate where people will land.
Maximize View Time
One of your goals in 2020 should be to get people to engage more with your video. More important than visits when you are trying to maximize revenue is Viewable Duration. The longer a video is viewable, the more opportunity you have to get users ‘hooked’ on a content piece and serve ads.
Larger video players can help catch people’s attention, but users may scroll past the player and take it off-screen. One way to increase viewability is by deploying a sticky, collapsible unit. As site visitors scroll down the page, the video window shrinks but stays in view. Research by Primis shows how effective this can be: collapsible video units can increase viewability by 51% and increase revenue by 139%.
The Right Placement on Page
Another way to maximize engagement is to consider video player placement. If the video is relevant to the page content or expands on the page’s subject matter, the best placement is usually as high up on the page as possible. If possible, put your video right below the title. This gives it the most viewable placement possible for advertising while delivering the content visitors are looking for at the moment.
If the content has not been created specifically to align with the page content, but are videos you want users to discover, it is better to move the video unit down the page. This lets the user focus on the information that brought them to the page first before providing them with a recommendation for related videos. This lowers bounce rates.
Engaging and Relevant Videos
It’s pretty simple. If someone is looking for something online and lands on a page, the more related the video is to the content, the more likely it is to be viewed. Place video that supports the content or is related to the content being viewed as often as possible.
There’s a significant opportunity here. 48% of consumers say they want videos that reflect the things they are interested in. Another 33% say they expect recommendations for what they could or should do next.
Many publishers use a single video to complement the text. While it may increase viewability for that one video, it fails to take advantage of interest in related videos that can improve engagement, time on site, and increase ad views.
The concept may be simple, but the execution is not. It is incredibly time-consuming to manually place related videos on individual pages. It also relies on gut instinct rather than using data-driven placements. Publishers should use a recommendation engine to aid in the discovery of relevant videos and video ads.
Most publishers do not have access to AI-enhanced discovery engines that can analyze content and user intent. In 2020 and beyond, however, this is going to be a key to competing.
Recommendation engines allow for discovery and increase stickiness. 70% of what people watch on YouTube comes from video surfaces by its recommendation algorithm. Netflix recently revealed that more than 80% of the TV shows people watch on Netflix come from its recommendation system.
Video Consumption Continues to Increase
As younger consumers age, video viewing will only continue to increase. By 2022, it’s estimated that more than 1 million videos will be playing on the internet every second accounting for 82% of all internet traffic.
Publishers should act now to optimize their video engagement and ad revenue to fit the fast changing consumption landscape.
