More than 80% of Digital Media Executives Say Video is a Top Revenue Driver, Yet Many Publishers Still Unprepared and Under-Equipped to Grow.
Insights from AnyClip publisher survey reveals a need for cost control, sharper insights and improved audience engagement tools to achieve success in the coming year.
New York, NY – (January 27, 2021) Survey data released today by AnyClip Inc., the video management, distribution and marketing platform, underscores the revenue significance and myriad of challenges of video for digital media companies entering into 2021.
The survey, which included 500 executives from digital media companies within the comScore top 5000, revealed that 82% of publishers claim video to be a primary revenue driver for their media business. While 78% of publishers say their company has a formal strategy in place to grow its video audience and revenue in 2021, only 8% claim that maximizing the value and volume of demand for traditional video advertising is their biggest challenge their business faces in 2021.
Against the backdrop of a difficult 2020, which brought spiky advertising revenues, budget cuts and layoffs to many media companies, nearly two-thirds of publishing executives claimed controlling cost to be their single-biggest challenge for 2021, including both video technology and licensing fees (29.8%) and content production expenses (28%).
To achieve video revenue targets this year, it will be critical for publishers to grow their video audience — a feat only possible with sharper insights and improved content management and engagement tools. According to survey findings:
Less than half (43%) of media executives claimed to have a good idea of the size of their total combined video audience across their owned and social media channels.
More than a quarter (27%) of publishers say they are frequently wrong or surprised by what their audience is actually interested in watching, with more than a third (36%) claiming that if they had better access to insights, their strategy/execution would be stronger
A need for enhanced content data and workflow automation dominated publishers’ reported content management and distribution challenges. Among these needs, tagging videos with metadata and managing/working with preexisting or archived content resources are the #1 and #2 biggest challenges publishers face in working with video assets. Searching for specific video assets within an existing video management file system is their biggest challenge in distributing video content, followed by tracking video performance.
Only about a third (36%) of publishers use video performance and engagement metrics to validate and pitch video solutions to advertisers.
While more than 80% of surveyed executives said that video was a key component of its revenue strategy, only 12.4% said that revenue and sales teams are influential in the decision making process. Respondents said that Productions (40.4%) and Product (35.2%) teams were the primary influencers when determining video strategy.
“While media companies understand the importance of video, we’re still seeing most address these challenges with tactical versus holistic strategies. This practice hampers growth by treating the symptoms and not the disease,” said Gil Becker, CEO and President of AnyClip. “The underlying issue with video is the general lack of data publishers have about their content itself. Without data, you cannot automate, enhance, recommend, measure, and plan with accuracy. Waste abounds. Echoing what we’ve heard in this survey, efficiency and accuracy will be the key ingredients for any publisher’s success with video in 2021. By embracing innovation and activating a deeper dataset beneath their video business, sharper intelligence, valuable content experiences and growth are all possible.”
To view the full findings, please visit https://newanyclipdev.wpengine.com/post/video-publisher-data-survey.
