Home Digital TV and Video The Atlantic’s New Video Strategy: Focus On YouTube

The Atlantic’s New Video Strategy: Focus On YouTube

SHARE:

The Atlantic used to have dueling video strategies – one aiming to improve direct monetization onsite and the other to extend its reach and audience offsite.

The Atlantic would first monetize video on its flagship site TheAtlantic.com using the Brightcove video player, then push those clips or cuts of them to YouTube.

But because off-platform distribution was secondary, the publisher was missing opportunities to build its audience.

“We were reaching a point where, while our audience was growing on TheAtlantic.com, it wasn’t the kind of audience that was [actively] seeking out our video,” said Kim Lau, The Atlantic’s SVP of digital and business development.

So a couple of months ago, The Atlantic, which was beginning to increase its video production, made a conscious effort to focus on off-platform distribution and monetization on YouTube.

“We started having conversations with YouTube about the opportunity to direct-sell pre-roll into video inventory on our YouTube [channel], which we hadn’t been able to do in the past because we weren’t at the scale where they’d offer it to us,” Lau said.

Going forward, all of The Atlantic’s original video series (it creates about 15–20 original videos per month now and is rolling out new YouTube-specific original series) will be monetized through direct-sold pre-roll on its YouTube channel or through its own site. Lau declined to share the terms of its rev-share with YouTube.

This shift marks a radical change for The Atlantic, which had gotten little monetary return for growing its audience off-platform to date.

“In the past, we were putting one video in multiple places, and you weren’t really able to leverage multiple distribution points together,” Lau said. “Now, once we know a video is doing well on our platform, that will show up in YouTube’s algorithm on its platform.”

If The Atlantic’s on- and off-platform strategies work in tandem, the publisher will better understand how to optimize yield.

Although The Atlantic shares other publishers’ concerns of developing an overreliance on platform-based distribution, the benefits sometimes outweigh the risks.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

The publisher will gain opportunities to attract subscribers interested in video content. And longform video, which The Atlantic produces, tends to perform better on YouTube.

“The goal is ultimately to grow streams on our site and beyond and to monetize those at a high rate, so we can continue to fund more investment into video,” Lau said. “In this business, you either have too much inventory you can’t monetize or you don’t have enough and there’s more demand. We’re definitely in the latter bucket.”

And YouTube is also a beneficiary. Although The Atlantic still uses the Brightcove video player, it will increasingly use YouTube’s player on its own site.

Although The Atlantic sees YouTube as its primary video platform, it’s not ignoring Facebook.

“There haven’t really been direct monetization opportunities there, so it hasn’t been as relevant for us,” Lau said. “But we have a huge audience there, and it’s still evolving.”

Must Read

AppsFlyer and Roku’s New SRN Integration Will Shed Light On CTV Campaign Impact

Roku and AppsFlyer announced the launch of a new self-reporting network (SRN) integration between both companies, which will allow mobile app advertisers to more effectively measure their streaming video campaigns

Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)

DOJ v. Google: How Judge Brinkema Seems To Be Thinking After Week One

Where the DOJ v. Google ad tech antitrust trial stands after one week’s worth of remedies arguments.

Swish, A Company That's Bringing Programmatic to Product Sampling, Announces Seed Funding

Swish, a startup that partners with retailers to provide product full-size CPG samples to people doing their grocery shopping online, announces $2.3 million in seed funding.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

DOJ v. Google: During Opening Arguments, The DOJ And Google Battle Over An AdX Divestiture

Court is back in session. And the fate of  the open internet is in the balance.

Chris Mufarrige, director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, FTC

FTC Consumer Protection Chief: No Easy Answers On Privacy, ‘Only Trade-Offs’

Privacy isn’t black-and-white, says the FTC’s Chris Mufarrige, promising evidence-driven consumer protection cases under the Trump administration.

How Encryption Keys Could Resolve The TID Furor

Rather than sharing universal TIDs that any DSP or curator can access, Raptive says publishers should instead share encrypted TIDs with an encryption key provided only to trusted demand-side partners.