Video Content: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Written by: Rashmi
News publishers have not just shifted from print to digital, they also have made the shift from text to video. But this is not the smoothest shift. To talk about this bumpy road, Quintype organised a webinar with Dailymotion on the topic “Video Content: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.”
In the webinar, Mr. Anupam Dasgupta, VP at Quintype, talked to Antoine Nazaret, VP APAC - Dailymotion. Mr. Dasgupta started the conversation with an important question: People expected in 2015-16 that video will displace text but why didn’t that happen? Commenting on this, Mr. Nazaret said that all of the media didn’t decide one day that they are going to shift from text to video. But there were some external pressures like Facebook and advertiser brands that wanted to test out the new platform.
The next topic Anupam chose to talk about was the content strategy. He asked Antoine about how the content strategy of digital news publishers should be different from TV news publishers or other publishers. Thanks to his years of experience in the world leading brand in terms of video hosting, Antonio answered this question clearly that TV content is totally different from digital video content. He said that TV has been there for decades and its content is well. That is why the competition is not between television and videos but between text and video. Also, the rules of video publishers keep changing abruptly in terms of the algorithm of platforms.
The natural segue from this point was about the content strategy decision about publishing content on your website or app versus across the channels. And should a video publisher prioritize one over the other? Antonio replied that on one hand, the media is moving towards the subscription model – relying only on its readers. But on the other hand, you also need to be present where there is a new audience to capture from the total addressable market. While your priority number one should be your core users, you should also use video publishing on different mediums as a marketing tool.
Anupam then touched upon the longevity of the content. News publishers spend a lot of resources on making quality videos, so how should they make sure that their videos stay evergreen and can be repurposed. Nazaret said that he has experienced a long tail distribution of videos in some cases like the same candidate winning elections again. Also, news publishers should tag the videos correctly to retract them later.
Commenting on sustaining the quality of videos, Nazaret said that the content strategy and quality should match with the brand equity. For example, viewers expect 24*7 content from certain TV channels. So, in such cases, the quantity might matter even more than quality.
Commenting on whether news publishers should just state facts or should also bring in perspective, Nazaret said that publishers can have different sections for plain facts and perspectives. They can go along as long as they are clearly defined.
Commenting on whether news publishers should just state facts or should also bring in perspective, Nazaret said that publishers can have different sections for plain facts and perspectives. They can go along as long as they are clearly defined.
After discussing content strategy, Mr. Dasgupta raised questions such as how Dailymotion measures the value added to news publishers? What are the metrics of that? Mr. Nazaret said that right now views are the go-to metrics for everyone but they are not the best way to see the performance because it is gamified by many players. And secondly, whether you have seen 5 seconds of video or 5 minutes of video, the view counts are the same. So, you have to actually see the engagement level as in how long the video is seen. If you can make the viewer stay till the end, you can put an advertisement at the end.
The panellists also talked about Dailymotion’s analytics for news publishers. Nazaret said that Dailymotion offers two types of analytics: self-analytics and third parties measurement companies like Google Analytics.
After an hour-long conversation, Nazaret ended the webinar by sharing that agility is important for video and video publishers should think about long-term goals.
Quintype’s headless CMS will now leverage the full content library and player technology of Dailymotion. Dailymotion will work closely with Quintype to provide the best-in-class video and monetization solution to its customers.