Voltax Video Refresh: Value to Editorial Teams

Video's overall ascendency in the publishing world has become much more than a trend, evolving from a fun accessory to add to your website to now claiming almost 82%  of global internet traffic from video streaming and downloads. Given this increased focus on video creation, everyone across your organization needs to align on the goals and expectations concerning the use of video. 

Launching videos on your site isn’t just a matter of uploading content to YouTube and watching the number of views climb into the millions. Without a clearly defined strategy, video simply can't succeed in today's competitive landscape. If your videos contain mixed messages, aren’t aligned with your editorial theme, or lack a concrete call-to-action, consumers will feel like the content is being pushed upon them. Video content should ultimately provide your consumers with an engaging complement to the traditional content the team is already producing. 

Many publishers have embraced social media platforms as important distribution channels for their content, with each platform offering an opportunity to reach large and new audiences. One trait that all of the popular social media channels share is the love for video. Unfortunately, what works on Facebook, isn't guaranteed to work on YouTube. And so on. With each platform commanding a different audience and online culture, content teams typically don’t have the resources to optimally create video content for each individual platform. This compromise can harm each video’s success and ultimately lead to frustration regarding the importance of video. 

Video has become much more than just a means to attract readers to a brand. It has grown to broaden distribution, grow site traffic, improve SEO scores, and effectively monetize content. At the same time, studies have shown that articles with embedded videos perform better with user experience metrics like time spent on page and lower bounce rates. 

Taking that first step into the video space is intimidating for many editorial teams, with outdated technology and hard-to-use interfaces increasing the barrier to entry. Luckily, here at Minute Media, the team has developed Voltax Video, an innovative Online Video Platform for the world's most passionate storytellers. 

Video Management System

When it comes down to it, editorial teams barely have enough time to maintain all of the content they already produce, whether it's articles, social posts, or other pieces of text-based content. Learning how to manage, embed, monetize, and effectively match videos to relevant content is a real challenge for most editorial teams. 

Thanks to our experience managing several editorial brands and partnering with hundreds of other publishers, our team knew specifically what editors would need in a Video Management System (VMS) to incorporate video content successfully into their overall strategy. Our VMS comes with an easy-to-use user interface that allows you to upload, manage and distribute your video content intuitively and without hassle. 

To keep everything coordinated, the home screen acts as a video library for all of your organization's video content. You can upload videos straight from your computer or directly from the video's URL into the video library, where you can embed, delete and customize every piece of content to ensure the correct metadata is associated with the video. 

Feeling overwhelmed with content options? Don't worry; we have developed advanced search and filtering options that allow you to sort by upload status, tag, duration, and date range. Our VMS empowers you to maximize transparency within your organization and improve contextual matching results by giving you complete control over each video's basic information and metadata. 

For teams that wish to include additional videos on their site, Voltax allows editorial teams to create three different playlists: Freestyle, Dynamic, and Semantic. Dynamic playlists allow you to sort content according to the tags in the metadata, allowing you to add videos to the playlist hands-free without any hassle automatically. The Freestyle playlist gives you complete control over your content, allowing you to manually pick and choose which videos are most relevant to the content. The third and arguably most exciting type of playlist utilizes Minute Media's contextual matching algorithm to create a Semantic playlist. Semantic playlists provide the user with an automatically produced playlist tailored directly to the content on the page. 

Content & Recommendation 

Arguably the most significant hurdle for editorial teams to enter into the video space are the extensive resources required to create video content. Creating professional-grade videos is an expensive proposition for most editorial teams. Shooting, editing, and production require special equipment and expertise that many editorial teams don't have regularly available. Yet, with so many options available to the end-user today, the need for relevant and engaging video content is more important than ever. 

In an effort to bridge the gap for editorial teams that have a limited budget for video production, Minute Media created an unparalleled global video library, which is now available to any of our publishing partners. Within the extensive library are over 400,000 videos from various premium content providers focused on sports, entertainment, lifestyle, and a mix of local and national news. 

Voltax Video comes equipped with several content and recommendation features to help organizations of every size maximize their multimedia options. On top of the ready-made videos from premium providers, Minute Media's content recirculation tool allows publishers to leverage their own written content to improve their video offerings. Our tool automatically reformats existing editorial stories into engaging video experiences by converting an RSS feed into a templated video file. After a quick initial setup, this process is fully automated, allowing editorial teams to benefit from new videos without any extra work. 

While it's essential to have plentiful, diverse content to choose from, publishers cannot overlook the importance of context. Multiple studies have been conducted showing how relevant videos increase time spent on page. On the other hand, unrelated videos ultimately provide an inconsistent user experience, increasing user bounce rates.

You may be asking yourself: "How does that work?" 

Well, put simply - We scan and analyze several data layers such as the image, title, text, and tags of any article. Our algorithm then automatically cross-references it against videos available in the library and creates a custom playlist for each piece of content.  

In addition to user retention, contextually matched videos also increase user engagement. For example, if a user showed interest in the Los Angeles Lakers and visited an article about the team's most recent win, there is a good chance they will interact with a video about Lebron James. In contrast, this user isn't as likely to interact with a video about China's political climate, so editorial teams must show the most relevant piece of content to ensure they are maximizing their engagement rates.

With this robust video library and an efficient system of matching and distributing content, your editorial teams can return their full attention to creating enticing content. 

Looking Ahead

Nearly a year after we launched Voltax Video in May 2020, the team continues to innovate and build on the original ideas of the platform. We are developing several new features that will significantly benefit editorial teams with an eye towards a more interactive and immersive video experience. 

In the near future, we will have the ability to provide partners with new content discovery experiences to increase several KPIs, including time spent on page, video views per session, and video engagement rate. The team is also working to enhance our VMS analytics dashboards to allow editorial teams to visually track the progress of each video, giving them the freedom to adjust their video strategies based on data rather than a gut feeling. 

Minute Media is committed to pushing the boundaries of what's believed to be possible in video technology and bridging the gap for ambitious content creators to amplify their content via video. 

It's also important to note the simple onboarding and integration process of Voltax Video. In less than a day, our team can create the number of relevant players you require and seamlessly integrate them into the various parts of your domain. There is very little technical work for you to do before you can begin to optimize your video content. 

For more detailed questions, feedback, or suggestions regarding Voltax Video, contact your account manager or send an email to PubOps@minutemedia.com.