Custom Playlists: Live in the Mediavine Video Player and Dashboard!

We’re excited to announce that as of today, we’ve built custom video playlists into the Up Next feature of the Mediavine Video Player.

That means Mediavine publishers can create video playlists directly inside the new Mediavine Dashboard. Publishers can embed these in posts, as well as set them as a featured video.

What Are Custom Playlists?

Custom video playlists are what they sound like, and what you probably think they are.

You can create a customized list of videos from those that you’ve uploaded to your Mediavine Dashboard and they will play in the order you list.

A custom playlist, if you will.

You’ll be eligible to serve another ad in between each video, as with the Up Next feature, potentially generating significant video revenue.

Custom Playlists SEO: Marking ItemList / Video Carousel Schema.org

What could be better than the additional video revenue — not to mention the great user experience — that a custom playlist provides?

How about an SEO boost as well?

That’s right, Mediavine Video Player SEO optimizations are in full effect. You can output ItemList schema.org for multiple videos, making you eligible for potential Video Carousel placement in Google search results!

When you go to insert a video playlist embed, you’ll notice the schema is turned off by default. This is intentional because first Video Carousels are limited access, so not every page will be eligible.

If you have a single video that’s more applicable to the post you’re working on, we recommend embedding that video and leaving on the video schema, while disabling the playlist schema.

When Should You Use Custom Playlists Then?

There are several scenarios in which inserting a playlist makes more sense than inserting an individual video. Here’s a look at a few cases, and whether to enable playlist schema or not:

1. Multiple videos apply to a post.
   Let’s say you have a recipe or guide with multiple steps, and a video for each step. You could create a playlist of those individual videos to be embedded into the post. It’s important to note that each individual video will require a permalink, or post URL of its own. If each individual video doesn’t have enough content to warrant its own page, you may be better off using our clip feature, which is coming soon! You would enable playlist schema in this case.
2. Playlists made for a post.
   Playlists are perfect if you don’t have an exact video for a post, but a playlist of related content that best represents that post. You can think of playlists in the way you use Lists in Create. Say you’ve come up with 10 Epic Things to Do In New York (holding out hope that doing things might be an option again someday) and you happen to have a video for each. You can now make a custom playlist of those 10 things and embed that playlist. This is a playlist designed specifically for that post, so you should enable playlist schema.
3. Playlist + Video for a post.
   Let’s say you make a playlist of your top recipes and want to insert this into various recipe posts. This may be a great experience, but if the playlist isn’t specifically about that post, you will want to disable playlist schema. This is extra doubly important if you also have a recipe or post specific video on that page.

In summation: If the post in question is about the playlist itself, then playlist schema all the way, no video schema.

If you have a single, specific video that better describes the page, then use video schema, NOT playlist schema.

Again, think of this similarly to how you use Lists in Create. Unless your post is about the playlist, or the playlist is about the post, don’t run schema. 

How Do You Create a Playlist?

We recommend following our playlist help article for the best guide, but for a quick start you can click on Playlists in the menu of your Mediavine dashboard.

Click the add button to start your playlist. 

You should add a title, description and thumbnail. 

Then, start adding your videos — but be sure to save your playlist.

You’ll be able to grab the embed code or select this new playlist as your featured video playlist under video settings.

Mediavine Control Panel Integration & More: Coming Soon!

What we’ve been talking about here is exciting stuff, but it’s just the start of a broader vision that we’re in the process of implementing.

An integration with the Mediavine Control Panel (MCP) plugin, which will let you embed your playlists easily in videos, is still to come.

And that’s not all. Even more exciting is that you’ll be able to assign featured playlists directly to categories inside the MCP.

So if you’re a food blogger with a travel section, then you’ll be able to run a travel playlist that’s automatically inserted into your travel category. These playlists will be inserted without schema — as the examples above illustrate.

Beyond that, we’ll be working on other ways to improve playlists, with awesome clip features coming to the Mediavine Video Player. We can’t wait to share more with all of you as we roll things out. And as always, we are counting on feedback from our publishers to help us make the best products and features, so please reach out to publishers@mediavine.com with any ideas, feedback or love.

If you don’t have enough content videos to use playlists on your site, no worries! Our Universal Player will let you take advantage of those amazing video eCPMs without having to create custom videos of your own.

With innovative solutions to increase revenue, optimize SEO and improve user experiences alike, no one does video like Mediavine.