August 14, 2013
Kaltura, the leading open source video platform (www.kaltura.com), and Taboola, the innovative content distribution and monetization platform, announced today the results of a highly-focused ‘expert poll’[1] that assessed digital publishing/marketing experts’ attitudes towards video-based content recommendations.
The poll provides a snapshot of current expert thinking on how best to surface fast-growing libraries of video content to targeted viewers, both now and in years to come.
The poll found that 27 per cent of respondents currently use paid recommendations to increase their video views and reach and fully 95 per cent of respondents would consider switching from marketing their videos using traditional advertising to paid recommendations/native advertising in the next few years.
By far the most popular technique currently being used by respondents to increase video views and reach is to ‘distribute content to other sites such as YouTube and Hulu’ (76 per cent). Almost half of respondents (48 percent) ‘use SEO and/or subtitles’ to gain more video views by appealing to a global audience. ‘Support for mobile devices’ was cited by 41 percent of respondents as something they have added in order to increase views and reach, while 33 per cent stated that they are ‘increasing the amount of video content available via syndicated/licensed content’ to boost views and reach.
Interestingly, opinion was split right down the middle on the primary reason for using content recommendations on their own websites: 42 per cent of respondents stated that they would use content recommendations to ‘boost their own traffic through recirculation’, while another 42 percent stated that the generation of ‘new revenue streams through paid recommendations/native advertising’ would be their main aim.
“In my view, the fact that 95 per cent of respondents would consider switching from marketing their videos using traditional advertising to paid recommendations/native advertising in the next few years shows the growing importance of video and the pressing need to identify better ways of matching the right video content to the right viewer. Video viewing is growing exponentially, but the challenge for marketers and publishers is to make it easier for viewers to find relevant content in the sea of video available that will encourage heightened viewer engagement. Our partnership with Taboola can help marketers and publishers to surface the right content at the right time to targeted viewers, which ultimately increases video views and reach,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO.
“What we’ve been hearing from many of our clients was echoed again in this poll: traditional display and search advertising just isn’t working for many marketers when it comes to building their video businesses,” said Taboola CEO Adam Singolda. “Search marketing requires that users have specific intent and advanced knowledge about which video they want to see, and display units provide relatively low engagement. Publishers are now looking to make their videos available outside of their own domains--when people are trying to decide what to watch next. Advanced native advertising platforms make suggestions that help bring the right video content to the right viewer at that crucial decision point,” Singolda continued.
Kaltura’s player, the fastest on the market today, has been integrated with Taboola’s advanced recommendations technology. This enables publishers and marketers, including sites such as TMZ, to easily add recommendations to the Kaltura player, to create a better experience for viewers and to provide better editorial controls.
About Kaltura
Kaltura provides the world’s first Open Source Online Video Platform, transforming the way people work, learn, and entertain using online video. The Kaltura platform engages hundreds of millions of viewers by providing media companies advanced video management, publishing, and monetization tools that increase their reach and monetization and simplify their video operations. Kaltura improves productivity and interaction among millions of employees by providing enterprises powerful online video tools for boosting internal knowledge sharing, training, and collaboration, and for more effective marketing. Kaltura offers next generation learning for millions of students and teachers by providing educational institutions disruptive online video solutions for improved teaching, learning, and increased engagement across campuses and beyond. Kaltura was recently recognized in Forbes as ‘one of the six fastest growing tech companies’, in VentureBeat as a ‘Next Billion Dollar Enterprise Tech Company’, in Business-Insider as ‘one of top 5 startups revolutionizing education’ and ‘one of 5 greatest open-source technologies for 2012’, and in Mashable as ‘one of top 5 social enterprise technologies for business’. For more information: www.kaltura.com, to join Kaltura’s community visit: www.kaltura.org and www.html5video.org.
About Taboola
Headquartered in New York City, with R&D in Israel and offices in London, Taboola is the world's leading content-distribution and discovery platform. Taboola serves over 2.5B daily recommendations to over 250M monthly visitors on the web's most innovative publisher sites, including USA Today, The Huffington Post, Time, and The New York Times. Publishers, marketers, and agencies leverage Taboola in order to retain users on their site, monetize their traffic, and distribute their content to drive high quality audiences. Learn more at http://www.taboola.com.
[1] The poll data was collected during a webinar on video-based recommendations run by Kaltura and Taboola and represents the opinions of 34 expert publishers and marketers. Sample size may vary based on the number of respondents for each question. (July 2013)