With online video exploding as the fastest medium for digital content, publishers are struggling to find ways to take advantage of their own libraries and keep more of their audience on their sites.
Right now audiences are being siphoned by Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, costing publishers hundreds of thousands of dollars on the millions of page views generated by the content they own.
As publishers try to emphasize their own owned and operated channels for distribution, advertising media technology developers are scrambling to provide tools to give them more of their traffic back.
The latest company to jump into this breach is IRIS.TV with a new tool called “Campaign Manager.” IRIS.TV purports to be the first company to come to market with a product that allows in-stream placement of branded, premium videos.
Online traffic now includes more than 750 billion videos views per month, and roughly 70 percent of all traffic on the web now is video. That consumption is also growing at 24 percent year on year.
Publishers need to keep pace with the growth of video, and the toolkit that’s built on top of IRIS.TV‘s video personalization technology is one way they can keep browsers on their site without directing them to a one-off landing page or having them consume the content elsewhere. Sites like Facebook or YouTube pay out at a maximum of $180,000 and $83,000 per 10 million views at the high end, according to data from IRIS.TV. That number increases to $2.5 million for content consumed on owned and operated channels.
In-stream programming using a personalization engine similar to the Netflix suggestion algorithm for videos and content on the service lets publishers keep browsers on the site longer, according to IRIS.TV. The company’s in-stream programming isn’t subject to ad-blockers and is already targeting users who consumer similar content, the company claimed.
Branded content campaigns programmed using the new toolkit from IRIS.TV let publishers customize how many times a particular piece of content is served in the video stream, at what time of day, on what kind of device in which geography and for how long, according to the company.
Basically, the software enables publishers’ video players to target browsers with better, branded content that users will want to watch. Those claims are, in part, borne out by the company’s data, which indicates a 62 percent average increase in monthly video views for its customers.
“The inconsistent UX of video ads has led to poor performance of websites and apps and in many ways has contributed to the rise of ad blocking,” said Richie Hyden, the company’s chief operating officer. “Branded content has proven to perform substantially higher than pre-roll while also commanding a premium of more than 20x and is paid on a cost per view basis.”
Personalization and machine learning tools that IRIS.TV has rolled out let publishers create inventories that target individual users rather than large groups. That greater personalization can help keep users on the site rather than losing them to social media sites like Facebook and YouTube.
Ultimately, IRIS.TV sees its tools as a way to combat the rise of ad-blocking tools and improve the economics for publishers online.