Home Digital TV and Video The Atlantic’s New Video Strategy: Focus On YouTube

The Atlantic’s New Video Strategy: Focus On YouTube

SHARE:

The Atlantic used to have dueling video strategies – one aiming to improve direct monetization onsite and the other to extend its reach and audience offsite.

The Atlantic would first monetize video on its flagship site TheAtlantic.com using the Brightcove video player, then push those clips or cuts of them to YouTube.

But because off-platform distribution was secondary, the publisher was missing opportunities to build its audience.

“We were reaching a point where, while our audience was growing on TheAtlantic.com, it wasn’t the kind of audience that was [actively] seeking out our video,” said Kim Lau, The Atlantic’s SVP of digital and business development.

So a couple of months ago, The Atlantic, which was beginning to increase its video production, made a conscious effort to focus on off-platform distribution and monetization on YouTube.

“We started having conversations with YouTube about the opportunity to direct-sell pre-roll into video inventory on our YouTube [channel], which we hadn’t been able to do in the past because we weren’t at the scale where they’d offer it to us,” Lau said.

Going forward, all of The Atlantic’s original video series (it creates about 15–20 original videos per month now and is rolling out new YouTube-specific original series) will be monetized through direct-sold pre-roll on its YouTube channel or through its own site. Lau declined to share the terms of its rev-share with YouTube.

This shift marks a radical change for The Atlantic, which had gotten little monetary return for growing its audience off-platform to date.

“In the past, we were putting one video in multiple places, and you weren’t really able to leverage multiple distribution points together,” Lau said. “Now, once we know a video is doing well on our platform, that will show up in YouTube’s algorithm on its platform.”

If The Atlantic’s on- and off-platform strategies work in tandem, the publisher will better understand how to optimize yield.

Although The Atlantic shares other publishers’ concerns of developing an overreliance on platform-based distribution, the benefits sometimes outweigh the risks.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

The publisher will gain opportunities to attract subscribers interested in video content. And longform video, which The Atlantic produces, tends to perform better on YouTube.

“The goal is ultimately to grow streams on our site and beyond and to monetize those at a high rate, so we can continue to fund more investment into video,” Lau said. “In this business, you either have too much inventory you can’t monetize or you don’t have enough and there’s more demand. We’re definitely in the latter bucket.”

And YouTube is also a beneficiary. Although The Atlantic still uses the Brightcove video player, it will increasingly use YouTube’s player on its own site.

Although The Atlantic sees YouTube as its primary video platform, it’s not ignoring Facebook.

“There haven’t really been direct monetization opportunities there, so it hasn’t been as relevant for us,” Lau said. “But we have a huge audience there, and it’s still evolving.”

Must Read

Comic: Off-Platform Media

How RMNs Use MFA And Cheap Inventory To Game Attribution Rules

Retail media is built on its attribution quality, but real purchases can be gamed by programmatic metrics and create perverse incentives for RMNs to serve ads across low-quality inventory.

There’s A Lot Wrong With Google’s And Meta’s Non-Transparent ‘Refund’ Practices

Google and Meta are playing with fire. Their opaque refund practices have already exposed them to customer blowback – and could lead to class-action lawsuits by disgruntled advertisers.

Comic: The Great Online Privacy Battle

How US Intelligence Agencies Buy And Use Programmatic Data For Surveillance

Mike Yeagley, an independent contractor who has scouted and acquired commercial data and technology on behalf of intelligence agencies, is one of the earliest evangelists of using ad tech tracking information to identify and surveil government targets.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Comic: The MFA Cafe

Adalytics Report Torches Ad Tech For Touting MFA Prevention While Scarfing MFA Supply

Practically every ad tech vendor has put out a press release in recent months full of bluster about cutting out made for advertising sites – and yet supply sources remain oversaturated with garbage inventory.

Cloud-Based Collaboration Is Ad Tech’s Post-Cookie Lifeline – But Will It Last?

Cross-cloud data collaboration technology is the best bet for a post-cookie solution. But it’s vulnerable to similar privacy concerns.

Topsort Raises $20 Million To Seize The Post-Cookie Market Opportunity This Year

Topsort raised $20 million, with plans to seize the 2024 opportunity for post-cookie ad tech.