It’s no secret that online video advertising provides a massive revenue opportunity for publishers. Last year alone, digital video advertising spend reached over $55 billion dollars, increasing from $41.44 billion in 2020. As this number continues to rise, building out your website’s video monetization strategy is crucial for your website’s success.
Whether you’re new to video or are continuing to optimize your current strategy, there are some key things to know about video advertising that could help you maximize revenue and improve UX.
1. Video Can Grow Subscriptions
Readers subscribe to your content when it feels relevant and valuable to them. Subscriptions might not be the first benefit you think of when implementing a video strategy, but if used correctly, video proves to be valuable when trying to build your email list.
Contextually relevant video is both first-party data friendly and effective when it comes to serving your community the content they want to see. Find a video partner that can provide contextual capabilities to improve your user’s experience and deliver content that is relevant to them. When users are being shown articles, videos, and other content that correspond to their interests and identity, they’ll be interested in subscribing to see more.
For many readers, the word “advertisement” has a negative connotation. Advertisements have a history of being loud and disruptive to a user’s reading experience. Their presence can make it harder for readers to enjoy the site’s content, encouraging high bounce rates.
Although the intention behind placing more, obstructive ads is to bring in more revenue, publishers will find that the opposite is the case. In actuality, it’s hurting their revenue by turning users away. To create a sustainable revenue model through ads, it will benefit your site to create non-disruptive ads that are placed in highly-viewable spots on-page. Video monetization platforms that have the capabilities for a variety of placements will be your best friend for making your video ads digestible and non-invasive.
Additionally, video monetization platforms that have contextual or machine-learning targeting capabilities further decrease your chances of disrupting users because website visitors will only video ads that are relevant and personalized for them.
Viewability, or how visible your ads are to your audience, is a key factor in creating a successful video strategy. Many publishers forget to consider viewability standards, placing their video player below-the-fold, behind content or in other less-visible places onsite, dropping viewability to below 50%. This is a dangerous game, sacrificing demand relationships and dwell time for ads. The less your readers can see your ads, the less revenue opportunities are presented.
There are many ways to increase viewability on your site without sacrificing UX. Check out EX.CO’s ebook, “The Science of Viewability and Beyond: A Publisher’s Guide to Maximizing Ad Revenue” to get exclusive insight and advice from industry experts on viewability and its crucial role for publisher success.
Video monetization is a valuable resource for publishers looking to share content and increase revenue. Learn more about EX.CO’s video player experience below and get in touch with us below!