Publishers Are Doing Video Content All Wrong: A Warning by Minute.ly CEO Amit Golan

More and more publishers are trying video shorts to cope with the shorter attention span of their audiences, but they often fail, as retaining the viewers’ attention and maximizing revenue gets harder with shorter video content.

So they try increasing content output, which leads to the need to hire more video content creators and therefore additional costs.

Minute.ly is an AI machine learning platform that empowers publishers, broadcasters, and content owners to optimize their video content more effectively by leveraging user behavioral data and sophisticated algorithms with the help of AI and machine learning.

Amit Golan, CEO of Minute.ly, joined Website Planet to explain why this approach is better to attract user attention, increase views, and maximize revenue opportunities from ads while reducing costs of hiring video editors.

In fact, it works so well that Minute.ly customers are seeing these results on average:

• 37% engagement uplift
• 63% increase in video views
• 40% incremental revenue increase
• Doubled instream video traffic

Let’s dive in.

What are the key challenges in your industry right now?

Two of the main current key challenges in our industry for publishers are: increasing user engagement to their content (including user retention) and generating additional revenue from their (video) content. There’s a series of factors causing these main challenges.

Users’ Short Attention Span

Users today have increasingly shorter attention spans, making it crucial for publishers to create content that quickly captures and sustains their interest. Failure to engage users promptly can result in decreased viewership and reduced retention rates.

Creating Shorter Video Content

To cater to users’ preferences and combat attention span limitations, publishers are compelled to produce shorter video content that delivers value efficiently. This shift towards brevity requires publishers to convey their message concisely while maintaining engagement throughout the video.

Attracting User Attention & Increasing Video Views

In a competitive digital landscape, publishers must actively seek ways to attract and retain users’ attention to increase video views. Strategies such as compelling thumbnails, engaging titles, and relevant content recommendations play a pivotal role in driving user engagement and boosting viewership.

Maximizing Ad Opportunities & Revenue

Monetizing video content is a key revenue stream for publishers, necessitating the optimization of ad opportunities within their videos. Balancing user experience with ad placements is crucial to maximize revenue while ensuring viewers remain engaged and receptive to advertisements.

Reducing Costs of Manual Video Editors

The demand for high-quality video content places pressure on publishers to maintain production standards while minimizing costs. To address this challenge, publishers are exploring automation tools, efficient workflows, and other technologies to streamline video editing processes and reduce reliance on manual labor.

By addressing these factors, publishers can enhance user engagement, drive revenue growth, and optimize their content creation processes to cut costs.

How are people trying to solve these issues, and why are these solutions not ideal?

Different publishers tend to address these issues in different ways. Some of the solutions they try are adding more video and content editors to their teams, and trying to catch up on the demand for additional edited video content. This is obviously not ideal since it increases their costs and headcount – and adds a burden on their budget.

Another solution publishers try in order to maximize their revenue is add countless ads and banners in various places on their website – affecting its loading time and harming the user experience.

How do you solve these problems in a better way?

Minutely’s AI-driven solutions enhance the impact of video content, boosting user engagement, expanding distribution, and maximizing revenue generated from content.

With our video AI optimization, we have the ability to automatically identify the most captivating moments in a video, in order to create short previews designed to capture viewer attention and guide users toward engaging video content. That actually replaces the need of manual video editors and can save the publishers the time, the hassle and the money to deal with it.

As for additional revenue and implementing ads – Minutely has a Top Videos solution – which is a player implemented on the website – showcasing a “carousel” with the leading videos of the leading items on the site – in one place. The ads are placed between some of these items in an elegant and less intrusive way.

What new challenges and opportunities do you see coming in the future?

A few of the new challenges we see ahead are:
– adapting the platform to different content consumption methods (horizontal, vertical)
– keep increasing user engagement and boosting CTR on video content
– using our technology to also help publishers who do not have video content monetize it
– keep finding new and efficient ways to deal with users short attention span
– the need to grab users attention in different ways throughout the site

How do you plan to adapt to these changes?

Minute.ly’s video AI optimization technology offers a unique and comprehensive solution tailored to the diverse needs of publishers across various business verticals.

With our unique tech backed by AI, we will be able to help publishers further increase user engagement and boost CTR on video content, while driving users to consume more video content on their primary player.

We’ll be able to help publishers promote Live Stream content, enhancing viewer participation and introduce additional revenue channels through Minute.ly’s Top Videos, mentioned earlier – a product designed for effective distribution.

Our tech will also assist content owners to seamlessly adapt existing video content for different digital platforms, including vertical video, optimizing content usage.

Another solution is facilitating seamless content distribution and syndication among different entities and across various sites. For instance, Minutely can extract content from FOX Sports (for example) and disseminate it across regional sites. Our comprehensive technology streamlines operations across platforms, allowing for efficient monitoring and fostering synergy among sites, both internally and externally.

In the bottom line, our holistic solution improves video ROI as a result of lower production costs and increase in distribution, as we are active both in livestream and VOD.