The hidden revenue gap you can’t afford to ignore.
You’re creating great content, so why isn't your video revenue reflecting that?
You’ve got the stories. Your newsroom is producing high-quality journalism. Traffic is flowing, your headlines are solid, and your readers are engaged. But when you look at your video monetization numbers, the results are… underwhelming.
Sound familiar?
If so, you're not alone. According to a recent industry survey by The Rebooting, in collaboration with EX.CO, only 23% of publishers rated their site’s video experience as at least “good” and 0% rated it as “excellent.” That’s a jarring stat, especially considering how central video has become to content strategies, monetization models, and user engagement. (See full report here).
So what’s the disconnect?
The truth is, most publishers are missing one critical piece of the puzzle: context.
It’s not your video quality.
It’s not your traffic.
It’s not even your ad stack.
The problem is that your video strategy doesn’t match the intent of your content. And that mismatch is quietly draining your revenue potential.
The real cost of irrelevant video
Here’s a simple equation most revenue teams overlook:
It’s a cascade effect. If a user lands on a page about breaking political news and the video player shows them a generic entertainment clip, the odds of them clicking play are slim. The odds of watching the whole thing? Even slimmer.
Now multiply that interaction by every article, every session, every user.
What you’re left with is a site filled with video inventory that’s underperforming-not because of bad content, but because it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Even worse, poor engagement signals can actually hurt your standing with demand partners. When your inventory underperforms on key metrics like play rate, completion, and viewability, advertisers may start bidding lower or avoiding your supply altogether.
The cost of context-free video isn’t just missed opportunity. It’s real, compounding revenue loss.
Why traditional video strategies don’t cut it anymore
Many publishers are still relying on outdated or manual tactics when it comes to video:
- Static carousels with the same 10 videos on every page
- Manually embedding clips into articles (which doesn’t scale)
- Relying on “most recent” playlists instead of topic relevance
- Using catch-all video players that don’t adapt to content
These approaches made sense in the early days of digital video, when the goal was simply to get more moving images on the page. But in today’s ecosystem—where attention is fleeting and monetization is algorithmic—relevance is everything.
Editorial teams don’t have the bandwidth to manually assign videos to every article. And even if they did, the volume of content, the speed of the news cycle, and the fluid nature of user behavior make that model unsustainable.
That’s where contextual video comes in.
What are contextual video recommendations (and why do they work)?
Contextual video recommendations use AI and machine learning to automatically match video content to the written content on the page—in real time, at scale, and without human input.
At EX.CO, we’ve built a contextual video engine that combines:
- Deep analysis to understand the article’s topic and tone
- Frame-by-frame video indexing to tag clips with rich metadata
- Machine learning models that continuously improve and update the content matching per article based on relevance and engagement data
- Real-time placement optimization to maximize user interaction and yield
Instead of guessing what your audience might want to see—or worse, serving them something completely unrelated—we let the content speak for itself. The system connects the dots between what the reader came for and what video will add value (and revenue) to that experience.
It’s personalized. It’s automatic. And it performs.
The data doesn’t lie: contextual video drives revenue
Let’s talk numbers.
Across EX.CO’s network of digital publishers, we’ve seen a:
- 22% increase in play rate after implementing contextual recommendations
- 35% increase in video revenue per session
- 12% improvement in video completion rates, which directly impacts ad fill and CPMs
- 14% time-on-page boost in some cases, thanks to stronger engagement
These aren’t vanity metrics. They’re bottom-line outcomes that affect your monetization strategy today.
And they don’t require a massive overhaul of your content operations or tech stack. Our solution plugs into your existing player and CMS, works with your taxonomy (or without), and starts optimizing from day one.
What happens when you don’t contextualize?
Let’s flip the script and look at what happens without contextual intelligence:
- Play rates stagnate because users don’t see value in unrelated video
- Completion rates fall-which reduces revenue from mid- and post-roll ads
- Your fill rate dips, and premium demand partners start pulling back
- Editorial teams burn out trying to manually assign video clips to articles
- Revenue teams lose confidence in video as a monetization channel
The worst part? You might not even realize this is happening because it doesn’t show up in obvious ways. It shows up in underperformance, sitewide. Quietly. Persistently.
What to look for in a contextual video partner
If you’re ready to upgrade your video strategy, here’s what to demand from any contextual solution:
✅ Automation: No manual tagging or video assignments
✅ Content-aware AI: Not just keyword matching, but true topic comprehension
✅ Integration-friendly: Works with your current video player, CMS, and ad stack
✅ Scalable metadata generation: Frame-by-frame video analysis, not just file names
✅ Built-in monetization optimization: Not just recommendations but also yield impact
Ask these questions:
- “How quickly can you start indexing my videos and articles?”
- “Will I need to overhaul my taxonomy or editorial workflows?”
- “Can you show me historical lift based on similar publishers?”
- “Do you optimize based on engagement signals in real time?”
If a vendor can’t answer these confidently, they’re not truly contextual.
TL;DR: If your video isn’t contextual, it’s costing you
You’ve done the hard work of creating high-quality articles. You may even have a strong video library. But without intelligent pairing between the two, you’re not monetizing your content to its full potential.
Contextual video recommendations bridge that gap.
They increase engagement, improve the user experience, boost your performance signals to demand partners-and most importantly, they drive more revenue with less effort.
So the next time you look at your video numbers and wonder why they’re lagging, ask yourself:
Is your video relevant to the page it’s on? Or are you just hoping it gets played?
Let’s take out the guesswork.
Ready to see what you're missing? Submit your information below so we can show you exactly how contextual intelligence can lift your performance and your bottom line.