Featured Video Playlists: An Easy Path to Major Revenue Growth

It’s no secret here at Mediavine that we’re obsessed with video.

After all, we’ve dubbed this the year/decade/century of video.

Hyperbole aside, we can’t overstate the incredible potential video has for publishers. With its ability to engage users and show off your content, video can earn you much higher CPMs than display ads – potentially up to 30% increases in RPM.

But it’s also no secret that video is … hard.

The best user experience is, without a doubt, creating a unique video for each post on your website. We realize that this goal is simply not realistic, given that video is so time consuming, so …

That’s Why We Invented the Featured Video

The idea behind the Featured Video is simple.

First, you select one of your existing Mediavine videos to be your Featured Video.

Then, on your individual blog posts, you can embed a video specific to those blog posts.

If you don’t have a specific video for a blog post? We automatically insert the Featured Video you selected inside that blog post, in an optimal position to boot.

Right out of the gate, this means you’re not just monetizing a handful of pages with video, but ALL of your post pages. This is how to really hit the ground running with video, and is the top recommendation in our Mediavine Video guide.

Then, further down the line, you can continue to make individual videos for your top-performing blog posts (see the guide, linked in the previous paragraph, for easy tips to get started, even if you don’t have video now).

All the while, you’ll know that all of your other content is still being monetized thanks to your Featured Video.

Featured Playlist

What’s really exciting is that with our new development, you can do more than select a single Featured Video. You can also make a Featured Playlist.

While Featured Videos have always been eligible in your Up Next queue – designed to deliver multiple views per page, if readers stick around long enough – the problem was that on each page, the Featured Video would play, followed by the Up Next playlist.

Now, you’re able to designate your Up Next playlist as your Featured Playlist and insert that on any posts without a video.

If this fits your needs, we actually think it’s a great user experience. As users browse multiple pages on your site, our player will remember where they left off, meaning a different video will play for the reader on each page.

What Should You Choose as Your Featured Video?

We recommend making this selection based on user experience. What video could potentially be inserted into most, or all of your posts?

Think about something like a best-of compilation, a welcome message, or other ideas that are applicable to as many pages as possible.

You’ll also want to keep this short in nature. Remember, thanks to Up Next, once a user finishes watching it, they can watch a second (or third, fourth, etc.) video on your site – plus the high-paying ads in between!

What if You Have a Featured Playlist?

The same concept applies here. You’ll want a more universally-applicable video of shorter duration to lead things off. For now, we only offer the option of the Up Next playlist. Support for other playlists is soon to come.

So for now, we recommend using the “boost” feature to push the shortest, best option to the front.

Then, check your dashboard and watch the video revenue flow in!