The evolution of publishing video for digital magazines continues, as shown by the likes of Refinery29, Quartz, and The Washington Post
The push behind publishing video or perishing is reaching a fever pitch now, and we must admit – it is in your best interests to start doing it. But do not fear: It’s not nearly as daunting a task as it might seem, and there are many ways to accomplish it.
Are you going to start producing slick, NYT-style slices of life overnight? No, probably not. But you can repurpose content with quick-hitting films, make behind-the-scenes features about producing stories, and share videos from other sources to start ginning up views and conversions.
You can also see what other digital magazines are doing. Digiday helps us out in that department today. Let’s get started!
Publishing Video in the Era of Platforms
Publishing video on social media platforms has been a matter of great opportunity amid great challenge, and digital magazines are perfecting the formula. Digiday reports on what some are doing to accelerate that process.
“It’s a perpetual dialogue between our editor in chief, head of production and head of social analytics,” LittleThings COO Gretchen Tibbits told Sahil Patel.
“We don’t put walls around it. Video is to our core and we ensure that any person at the company has the ability bring in ideas for what would be a good video for our site, Facebook native video and even Facebook Live.”
Added Refinery29 co-founder and CEO Philippe von Borries:
“One thing that we’ve done at a very high level is brought editorial, video and social together under the leadership of one person [Refinery29 chief content officer Amy Emmerich]. That was a big step for us because for the most part, video, editorial and social were kept separate because they were so different. There’s enormous potential in integrating them, which makes sense when you’re talking about a distributed platform world. It’s all about engagement, and it does not matter if that’s an article, a video, a live stream, or anything else.”
Refinery29 Pouring Resources Into Publishing Video
Speaking of Refinery29, it is going all in on publishing video, Digiday reports.
“The Internet is eating television. That’s what Refinery29 co-founder Philippe von Borries concluded about the shift of digital publishers, like Vice, BuzzFeed and now Mashable, migrating to TV. Speaking at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado yesterday, he said that creating video for television is ‘one really important marker’ in a company’s evolution,” Jordan Valinsky writes.
“‘With video right now you need go all-in,’ von Borries said, adding that it’s essential to have a hand in every type of format. ‘It’s about short form, it’s about creating great content for Facebook, but then it’s about live, 360 [degrees] and [virtual reality].'”
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Quartz Monetizing Video Content by Orders of Magnitude
Quartz, meanwhile, is making quick work of video, increasing views by hundreds of millions in just 10 months, according to Digiday.
“Like other publishers, Quartz needs to be where its readers are, which increasingly is messaging apps. Delaney said the Quartz app has gained ‘hundreds of thousands’ of downloads since launch in early February, with users spending cumulatively three years within the app. The app delivers news snippets and sends readers to other news sources, in the conversational style of messaging platforms,” Lucinda Southern writes.
“With a new content-management system in place and a dedicated team of four already writing specific updates for the app and its daily email newsletter, Quartz is gearing up to publish directly to messaging apps. ‘Our journalists are writing scripts of news natively for a messaging platform, we can extend this to other messaging platforms like Slack and Facebook Messenger. The degrees of technological difficulty of integrating other messenger platforms is dictating the pace with which we extend to other platforms. Clearly, the potential audience is much bigger if we integrate in messaging services, they are natively mobile,’ he added.”
Washington Post Producing Vertical Video for Digital Advertisers
Finally, WaPo is making its tech-vending owner proud by offering ad services to clients with the trendy vertical video, Digiday reports.
“The average CPM for ads on The Post’s website ranges from $5 to $50 depending on how the ad is targeted and on what page it is served, Dicker said. For the custom ads, The Post charges an extra $3 CPM above the base price. Brands can run the creative elsewhere at whatever price they get through ad networks, plus the $3 premium for the Post. None of the advertisers have done so yet, but Dicker said he hopes that once clients see the performance, they’ll demand that rival publishers start running them,” Garett Sloane writes.
“There are seven vertical ad campaigns in the works with brands, including ones with Bank of America and Raytheon, according to the Post. Some of those brands plan to run their vertical ads outside The Post’s properties, Dicker said. Early results show that the video ads, which run up to 15 seconds long, get a more than 50 percent completion rate, Dicker said. The Post pushes the format in almost every sales call, Dicker said. His research and development team is comprised of eight people, supporting a larger sales organization of 60, mostly based in New York. He has five engineers, a designer and a user interface expert, helping build the platform.”
Are you publishing video? Tell us about your experiences in the comments!
To read more about publishing video and other industry news, visit Digiday.
