Mediavine Video Player Placement: Recipe Card or In-Content?

We’re often asked by publishers where the Mediavine Video Player should be placed to deliver the best performance: in the content or within the recipe/how-to card.

As always, there are multiple factors to consider when determining the ideal placement (and how we’re defining placement itself, which we’ll get to momentarily), and they’re the usual suspects: SEO, user experience and, of course, revenue.

First, Let’s Define Placement

There’s actually two placements we’re talking about here. The first is where, in the Schema.org markup, your video appears: In its own VideoObject at the top level of Schema.org, or inside a video property inside the Recipe or HowTo object.

(Wondering what is Schema.org? Don’t miss our post that explains how it works.)

If you don’t know what that means, you aren’t alone, and that’s okay. Basically, think of it as what is outputting the Schema for you: The Mediavine Video Player, the top level VideoObject or your recipe card plugin (when the video is inside the recipe card).

The second placement is the physical location of the player, as in where is it being displayed: Inside the card, or inside the content.

So ideally, where should you want the Schema and where do you want the player to physically live? Let’s break that down through the lens of SEO, UX and revenue potential — the three goals we mentioned above.

SEO

It’s no secret that Google loves video, and so do we.

We devoted an entire blog post to video and SEO, but today we’re focusing on its Schema.org placement. Where is it better to output your video schema?

The answer is easy: your Recipe or How-to card should house the video and its Video Schema.

The good news is that Schema in the card (which the Mediavine video player outputs for you) will make you eligible for the rest of the Google video carousels and positions.

User Experience

Running your content video in the recipe or how-to card is also the best place for user experience, because it connects the video to the instructional content of your post. It just makes more sense there, rather than having the video floating somewhere above the card, when the reader might not yet be ready to watch it for learning purposes.

Revenue

Finally, to maximize your video ad revenue, we encourage you to turn on the Universal Player to run in place of your content video within the body of the post.