How to Monetize My Website with Videos?
Unlike static media, videos have the power to engage users and potentially generate millions of views. But video content is not cheap. So how can you make sure you are making money off of the videos you publish? What are the Top 4 solutions at your disposal to leverage video and generate revenue?
1. Join syndication networks
Joining syndication networks such as Youtube and Dailymotion will allow you to scale your videos on platforms that have huge amounts of traffic. As the largest video streaming platform, Youtube can build your audience, drive your video views up, and earn money on your original, syndicated videos. YouTube owns one fifth of the digital video ad market, allowing content owners to earn a share of revenue for every video that serves an ad. However, only 55% will go to you, while the remaining 45% will go to YouTube.
Still, unlike other platforms like Facebook, Youtube allows you to embed your original videos while Dailymotion allows you to embed third party videos onto your owned and operated properties, which you can likewise monetize via ads appearing before, during or after the video. This solution is cheap, but requires day to day editorial management as you have to embed specific video onto your article pages, search manually for content, create playlists, etc.
2. Implement programmatic or direct ads solutions
Direct and programmatic selling both entail the selling of ad space on publishing websites. While direct selling involves human interactions to manually negotiate, sell and place video ads on a website, programmatic ad selling is a data-driven system that automates this process.
Direct ad sales give you complete control over which video ads appear on your website and usually result in higher CPMs. However, they require hiring sales representatives, can be time-consuming and are typically only suitable to publishers with large amounts of traffic.
Meanwhile, programmatic advertising is suitable for small, midsize and large publishers. Implementing programmatic ads solutions is not only sophisticated in that it allows you to effectively target your campaigns to the right audience and optimize your revenue yield, but it removes the need of human negotiations and processes involved in direct media buying decisions, rendering ad transactions more efficient, reliable and inexpensive.
However, you need to use a professional video player and build your own video inventory before implementing any programmatic solution like SSPs (Supply Side Platforms), meaning that you have to produce your own original video content in-house, involving a dedicated team (journalists, reporters, producers, technical operators, post-production editors, etc.) or at least negotiate content licences with content owners or syndicators.
3. Create branded content videos
Branded video is sponsored content that gives publishers another opportunity to monetize video through partnerships with brands and marketers. Contrary to traditional advertising such as banner or native ads, branded videos focus on high quality and original storytelling. It is therefore a crucial way for brands to engage their viewers. Brands and marketers fund the production of the content, while publishers provide an audience by sponsoring the content on their websites or activate other channels to amplify the reach (think Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, etc.).
However, branded content creation is expensive to produce and extremely time-consuming to source and manage, which is why getting your hands on it may be a difficult task. Moreover, your site should be strong and popular, or a very sophisticated niche, media brand to make sure that advertisers will be hooked when seeking the opportunity to partner with you.
4. Install a full-stack video widget
Installing a full-stack video widget is probably the best way to monetize video on your sites as it give you opportunity to get contextual and licensed video content for your sites, unlock a premium video inventory thanks to automatic in-article recommendation placement, and generate additional revenue thanks to built-in programmatic advertising.
