Video content: what are the benefits for publishers?

The publishing industry plays a delicate and decisive role in the economic and social ecosystem of our world.

It’s a huge industry, with many sub sectors and lots of diversification, and there are decisive differences, between a publishing house that focuses on selling books and a newspaper not to mention the peculiarities of each individual newspaper, depending on its size, editorial focus, business model, target readership, and target audience of potential advertisers.

However, what is the common factor that has radically impacted all of the very different players in this industry? It’s very simple: the turning point of Digital Transformation.

This is not the place to conduct an in-depth analysis of the set of transformations unleashed in the publishing ecosystem since the digital revolution: transformations that, by the way, continue to act, day in and day out. Instead, we want to focus on a very specific, but paramount aspect.

We’re talking about video content for publishers. We all know that one of the most obvious effects of the digital transformation of the publishing world is the multiplication of media, channels and types of content.

In the midst of this expansion, there is one type that stands out above the others, and that’s video.

In this post, we will share the main benefits of producing and distributing video content for publishers.

They are manifold. They go deep and wide. In many cases, they also show that there are still great marginsall yet to be exploited.

We have chosen to collect them around the 5 most crucial points: the familiarity that audiences have with video; the ability of this media to attract attention; the comprehensibility and memorability of the communications it conveys; the coverage and engagement it provides, especially on social networks; and finally, the great support that video content for publishers provides for everything related to search engine ranking.

Let’s start with one important realization: videos work because the audience prefers them to any other type of digital content. To put it another way: we are all very familiar with video content.

According to the most recent estimates, more than 3.3 billion people watch videos online on a regular basis. In 2019, this number was 2.78 billion. By the end of 2023, it is estimated to reach around 3.5 billion (source: insiderintelligence.com). By early 2023, YouTube had around 2.6 billion monthly active users. In 2019, it was 2 billion. In 2010, “only” 200 million (source: demandsage.com).

Here, we see an unmistakable and unstoppable trend, which is reflected in this data:

• By 2023, video is projected to make up about 82.5% of all data traffic on the web. In 2018 this percentage was already large, but it was much lower, in absolute terms: 75% (in an online ecosystem that is expanding considerably by the day: we must always keep it in mind).

In short: these figures speak very clearly about the public’s familiarity with video, its diffusion, and the trend for the immediate future. 

We are all immersed in a digital world where stimuli comes from every direction, at an increasingly accelerated rate. Some call it the infosphere.

News literally jumps out at us from our smartphones or PCs, while we work, between business meetings, while we wait for public transportation, while we relax at home in the evening. In short: at all times of the day and in all places.

We often end up on news sites from social networks; sometimes we seek out information on publishers’ homepages as a habit. We also tend to follow links shared by friends on sms or WhatsApp, or, again, our browsing starts from a Google search.

On the publisher front, this translates into an increasingly complicated struggle to capture the attention of online users. To bring them to their own pages. To make them stay as long as possible. And, most importantly, to make sure they return often, naturally, because a relationship of trust has been established.

There are many ways to achieve these goals. And they vary significantly depending on the characteristics of different players. In short, there is no universal recipe for successfully reaching the goal.

However, what is certain and valid for all is that video is the type of digital content that is most likely to attract users’ attention. This is something very intuitive: just think about the common experiences that so many of us share. An experience that is also reflected in the data that has emerged from research. Here is one:

• 55% of people pay more attention when watching videos than any other type of content (source: omnikick.com). 

Capturing users’ attention is important, sure. But it serves little purpose if that same attention is then lost within moments. In short, attention is of little use if it is not transformed into a clear, concise, and memorable understanding of a communication.

Also on this front, video content for publishers proves to be as valuable as ever. Without belaboring the point, here is a statistic that could not be more telling:

• In general, the user viewing a video understands and believes 95% of the message it contains. When it comes to text, this drops to just 10% (source: insivia.com).

So: videos attract attention and are able to keep it constant, much more so than other types of content. The result is a clear and memorable understanding of the content conveyed. What does this translate into?

Into a marked preference on the part of readers, who will return more and more willingly to a publisher’s pages who, as a result, will stand out more and more amidst the chorus of stimuli.

What is being drawn, then, is an virtuous circle!

Video content for publishers captures attention, increases ease and clarity of understanding, and leads to reader retention. But that’s still not all.

In fact, videos are the best-performing type of digital content in terms of engagement, thus active involvement by users. Engagement means greater visibility, first and foremost.  It means greater coverage. It means an increase in the average time that users spend on a page.

And it’s a much stronger push for viewers to spontaneously share a piece of content.

This last aspect is absolutely decisive on social networks, especially the way algorithms work today: a piece of content taken from a personal profile performs significantly better in terms of organic coverage than the same content posted on a business page of any kind (excluding, of course, anything to do with sponsorships).

Again, in concluding this fourth and penultimate point, here is some supporting data:

• In a study conducted by Buffer of nearly 800 million Facebook posts, it found that videos generate, on average, 59% more engagement than other types of posts (source: buffer.com)
• On Instagram, the content that generates the best engagement rate is, once again, videos (source: mention.com)
• On LinkedIn, videos show an average engagement rate that is three times higher than text-only content (source: businessinsider.com).

Here we come to the last point, one that is of great importance.

Video content for publishers is also the best ally when it comes to SEO.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optmization, and it indicates strategies for optimizing the search engine ranking of online content and pages, increasing their visibility.

The higher the ranking of a website or an individual page, the more they will be seen by users, with the consequent return in number of clicks (and all that comes with it, for example, in terms of advertising, but also in terms of possible subscriptions and much more). A warning, however: SEO is not an exact science. It has been calculated that Google’s algorithm changes about 500 times a year, and it is normal for strategies and best practices to change very quickly.

But there are some fixed points. And among them is the very important role that video plays.

Let’s look at some data:

• Videos rank an average of 50 times better in organic search engine rankings than links that contain only text (source: seoinc.com). 
• Search results that contain a video have a 41% higher average Click Through Rate (CTR) than results from text pages (source: aimclear.com).
• Blog posts that contain video see a 157% increase in traffic compared to those that contain only text (source: searchenginepeople.com).

Finally, pay attention to another crucial aspect: a key metric for improving search engine rankings is the average time that a user spends on a page. And, if well constructed, videos are the perfect medium to increase this average time.

We will return to the topic of SEO and video content for publishers in one of the next posts on our blog. Stay tuned!