Earning revenue from videos is still about views, scale and pre-roll advertising. The pre-roll format is what publishers have become accustomed to, and to some extent, what audiences have become familiar with, even if they aren't necessarily happy with it.
"But there must be a saturation point," said Ben Sinden, director of video at Telegraph Media Group, at the Monetising Media conference in London on 22 September.
"The world today is still predominately pre-roll, so all you need to do is serve more video on more pages. However, I don't think this is the solution."
Recent research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed news audiences still prefer text articles to video, so putting video on every page may not be the answer.
Sinden also explained that as audiences turn to mobile, it is unclear whether pre-roll advertising will be successful on such a small screen, where viewers may be less likely to stream an advert, and footage shown by publishers can often be seen ad-free on social media sites such as Facebook.
"I think it's vital that, as publishers, we stay true to our core values so we can maximise future monetisation opportunities, while serving the audience correctly and maintaining a great user experience," he said.
The Telegraph has implemented ways to ensure an increase in video views in the pre-roll dominated industry, while attempting to positioning itself for the future, where it also anticipates earning revenue outside of pre-roll advertising.
Newsroom 'Search and Embed' tool
The Telegraph has enabled all journalists in its newsroom to search for and embed relevant videos into any article. Previously, the video desk had to do this after an article was written, or even published.
"This system meant delays and missed opportunities to include video from the off, and maximise revenue opportunities immediately," said Sinden.
"Our in-house tool enables the whole newsroom to add videos in just a couple of clicks. It can search for things like keywords, tags and original content, which makes sure they are as relevant to the article as possible."
This use of this tool has pushed the number of videos displayed on the publisher's site up by 20-30 per cent, Sinden added.
Increase of video embeds
"Now that our editorial team could actually access video, we needed to encourage further usage.
"So we started to track the number of articles published that included a relevant video embed, and subsequently set targets for desks of a certain percentage," said Sinden.
"Setting targets offers an opportunity for us to generate more monetised views, as this way of working has had a really positive impact on our commissioning procedure as well as our planning.
"Where there were opportunities to embed video, yet a suitable video could not be found, the team could look ahead, commission in advance, turn something around quickly and make sure we have the best piece of video that is relevant to the article."
The team compared two weeks of data, one week before the targets were announced and one after their implementation, with an equal daily number of published stories. Some 41 per cent more videos were published the week after the targets were introduced, and the total number of plays grew by a third.
Auto-forward and relevant recommendations
To try to prevent viewers from leaving the site after a video had ended, The Telegraph introduced a feature to make sure another video would start automatically – one which was as relevant to each individual user as possible.
"We are looking at algorithmic solutions to make it more personalised, as the more relevant the video, the more likely they will stay to watch on," he said.
Sinden then explained that in the first three months after this feature was implemented, certain sections of the site saw a 60 per cent increase in views – The Telegraph will be rolling this out across the entire website towards the end of 2016.
Player improvements
The Telegraph will also be updating its video player before the end of the year, to ensure videos load faster and to improve the viewing experience across devices.
"The content loads so fast on Facebook and YouTube," said Sinden.
"The audience doesn't have time to wait around for a video to load, especially if it's followed by a 30 second advert. We want to increase our views to increase our revenue."
The publisher also wants to allow audiences to discover related or recommended content themselves after they have watched a video, and will be able to monitor user behaviour within the player itself.
Looking to the future
The Telegraph has chosen to focus on a premium experience with original videos, designed to add value to advertisers and help the publishers move towards a sponsorship model rather than continue to depend on pre-roll.
The Telegraph's dedicated video portal, which sees original content curated into series, allows users to view video on its own, in contrast to the more restrictive format of embedding videos into text articles.
"Three months into the launch of Telegraph Video, we've seen views per visit more than double," said Sinden.
The portal, which is editorially led, produces more than 30 news videos each day, while also producing and curating an eight-part series each month.
Sponsoring the series brings The Telegraph revenue that's five times higher than their monetisation efforts for general video plays, explained Sinden.
"Advertisers have no influence over the content, so once the first sponsorship run is over, that content can be repackaged," he added.
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