In just five minutes of tapping and scrolling, the average smartphone user will come face-to-face with dozens of entities vying for their attention: brands, content creators, influencers, personal friends, and, of course, publishers. Everyone, in 2024, is fighting for a slice of the attentional pie, and those slices seem to be getting thinner by the day. The kinds of deep relationships fostered by conventional media—where a reader might check a website half a dozen times a day—are harder and harder to create. Deep connections have been replaced with a kind of frantic grazing.
The goal, for anyone looking to maintain a profitable media enterprise, is to figure out a way to thrive in this environment—to keep audience attention on you when those audiences have somewhere in the range of twenty billion entertainment options. All manner of experiments have been attempted in this arena over the years, but recently, one has proved to have an unusually strong foundation: contextual video recommendations.
We already know that these days, video is the sine qua non of the internet—certainly, it dominates the big social media platforms, which have repositioned themselves en masse as short-form video delivery engines. Two reasons present themselves for why this has been such a successful move for these platforms. One, consumers genuinely appear to want it. Two, the videos presented by these platforms are contextual—i.e., directly relevant to the user's interests.
The fact is that, for publishers, simply slapping any old video onto a website page isn't going to cut it. For video to truly become a viable revenue source for publishers, the content they present needs to be relevant and engaging. With content like that, publishers can keep viewers on-site for longer, reduce bounce rates, and enhance overall satisfaction. Without content like that, publishers risk losing their foothold on consumer attention—with potentially disastrous results.
Why Context and Personalization Matter in Video
Publishers may wish it were different, but the reality is that the big social platforms set the pace for content engagement. Over the past few years, these platforms have trained consumers to expect a constant stream of relevant, on-demand content tailored to their interests.
As a result, when consumers are served irrelevant video—simply because the publisher has it available—they are much more likely to click away. They expect more, and when those expectations aren’t met, it can leave a negative impression on both your website and brand.
The solution to this challenge is contextual video recommendations, which create a seamless experience. Users are shown videos that naturally align with the content they’re already engaging with, leading to significantly higher levels of engagement.
The Benefits of Contextual Video Recommendations
Let's say a hypothetical user is reading an article on your site about the upcoming presidential election. They're riveted—who isn't—and they're looking for more related content. Suddenly, a video player appears, showcasing content about Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. Interesting, perhaps—but not what the reader was looking for. They click out of the page, and take valuable engagement-hours with them.
Now imagine the reverse—a user is reading an article about a sporting event, and a video player emerges with highlights from recent games. The connection here is direct, focused, and far likelier to boost retention. You are giving the user what they want, and you are being rewarded accordingly with their continued attention and dwell time. It's a fairly simple equation—but too many publishers have yet to apply it.
In the sporting event example above, the video serves as a portal—to additional relevant videos on your site and to other relevant articles the user might be interested in. If holding attention is the key task of publishers today, video serves a potent function—restoring interest-levels and giving users the initiative to keep clicking around.
As importantly, it motivates users to return—because invariably, personalization builds a deeper connection with the audience, fostering brand loyalty and encouraging repeat visits. The level of personalization here can (and should!) get quite granular—curated, dynamic playlists are a surefire way to enhance viewer return rates.
How Contextual Video Recommendations Work
Contextual video recommendations operate similarly to other forms of algorithmically recommended content. However, instead of relying solely on user history or broad demographic data, these recommendations are driven by the context and subject matter of the page or article the user is viewing in real time.
For instance, a breaking news article on climate change could trigger a series of related videos on environmental policy or a groundbreaking scientific discovery. Think of it like frogs hopping from one lily pad to the next—the goal is to create an engaging journey through your content archive, guiding the user from point A to B to C, keeping them engaged for as long as possible.
With AI being a major talking point today, it’s impossible not to highlight the incredible benefits this technology offers for contextual recommendations. Many publishers now use AI-driven algorithms and data analytics to refine video recommendations based on evolving user preferences.
In EX.CO’s contextual video recommendation engine, large language models (LLMs) leverage vectorization to convert data such as text, images, audio, or other content into numerical representations. Through text vectorization, similarity scoring, and result ranking, the engine identifies and matches videos that best align with each article, enhancing the overall user experience.
Practical Applications for Publishers
It's worth drilling into the concept of context, which happens to be far richer than some publishers may realize. Context doesn't simply mean following a politics-related video with yet another politics-related video. It goes deeper than that. For instance, a user may be watching a video about a Congressional scandal—the next video offered up may address that scandal's implications for the Congress member's next election. The result is a more immersive experience—turning single-story videos into multi-video viewers.
This deepening flow of content has particular implications for niche sites, whose readers often can't find the content they're looking for anywhere else. Video, in this sense, serves a stickiness function—your readers may already be hyper-engaged with your content, but the right video (or series of videos) can keep them around even longer and create an even more meaningful relationship with your brand.
Measuring Success: Key Metrics to Track
When it comes to contextual video recommendations, there are four key metrics to pay attention to. They are:
1. Dwell time
The longer a user's dwell time is, the more it indicates that they are engaged with your recommended videos. By tracking whether your contextual video recommendations are increasing average session length and video completion rates, you can get a more detailed sense of whether your strategy is working (and realign accordingly if it isn't).
2. Bounce rate
This is the dreaded moment: the user has had enough, and they drop out of the page. The math here is fairly simple: if you find your bounce rates have decreased after implementing contextual video recommendations, it means they're working; if they've stayed the same or even increased, it means some tweaking is in order. The next step here, of course, would be to adjust placement and relevance in order to optimize results.
3. Video engagement and retention
This is where you get granular. By tracking engagement metrics like playthrough rates and both positive and negative interaction rates, you can ensure your personalized video content is resonating with your audience. The data is available—you just need to leverage it to your advantage.
4. Conversion rates
The kinds of personalization that contextual recommendations allow for are key to driving conversions, whether that’s for subscriptions or ad click-throughs. Accordingly, publishers should pay close attention to the impact of personalized video recommendations on conversion metrics like paid subscriptions, ad performance, and social shares.
What is clear, in these early days of the online video revolution, is that context is king. Contextual video recommendations improve user experience, increase engagement, and reduce bounce rates—all while driving deeper audience connections. As outlets of every stripe begin to take a more concerted approach towards video—and as competition inevitably intensifies—it is incumbent on publishers to get serious about personalized video strategies, leveraging context to offer the kinds of relevant, meaningful content they won’t find anywhere else.
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