Mediavine Video Player 2.0: An Introduction

We’re excited to announce the release of an updated version of our custom video player, known as the Mediavine Video Player 2.0.

As we’ve noted in our Go for Teal video series, we’re making 2018 the year of video at Mediavine, and the Video Player 2.0 is a big reason for that.

The 2.0 version is still a custom built HTML5 video player based on the popular open source video framework, Video.js, much like our original 1.0 player.

This is an update to the same player you’ve already hopefully been using on your site – the player that powers the patent-pending Mediavine Video Adhesion as well as the videos you embed in your posts.

In fact, most publishers won’t even notice the difference thanks to our backwards-compatible embed codes that you already have in your posts.

You’ll still be uploading videos to the same place in your dashboard and inserting videos into your content the same way.

So then why is this so exciting?

Mediavine Video Player 2.0 is built for the future.

With its release, our engineering team built a modular setup, designed around testing, both locally, on our own sites, and once it’s live in production. This will allow us to rapidly release new features that you’ve been waiting on for a long time.

Just a small preview of things to come in the coming weeks and months:

SPEED

Like everything else we do, the new player is designed to be faster. The code is significantly lighter, bundled together, and cached forever. That means videos will load a LOT faster.

Video Adhesion Improvements

Since the launch of our video adhesion, we’ve received suggestions from publishers such as allowing users to click to featured posts. This and many more features are coming soon thanks to 2.0!

Sticky Desktop Player

We’re adding the ability to make videos “sticky,” like you’ve seen on Facebook and throughout the web. Once a user is watching your video on desktop, the video will stick with and follow the user, leading to higher viewability and ad completion rates – which lead to happy advertisers paying you more!

Playlist Support

Soon you’ll be able to build both static and dynamic playlists for your videos, allowing users to watch multiple videos (and see multiple advertisements) as they browse your site. This should improve both user experience and ad performance.

Improved Revenue

Like its predecessor, Mediavine Video Player 2.0 is built around Video Header bidding on Prebid.js; 2.0 will allow us to further optimize the auction process with our ad partners, making you more money!

When is it going live?

Version 2.0 has already been tested on The Hollywood Gossip for the past several weeks and so far things are looking very promising.

That means it’s almost time for us to launch this across the Mediavine community, likely within the next week or two. Stay tuned!