JW Player Launches Innovative Video Recommendations Engine, Increases Publishers Ad Revenues Up to 50%

Press Release 3 min read | Oct 26, 2016 | newbreed

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Publishers That “Flick the Switch” Turning on JW Player Recommendations on average see lift of between 20% to 50% in views & ad revenue within the first month of implementation

NEW YORK – October 26, 2016 – JW Player, the world’s most popular video player and leading digital and mobile video solutions company, today launched JW Recommendations, an algorithmic and data-driven engine empowering publishers to present relevant videos that keep viewers engaged longer, while generating up to 50% more views and ad revenue.

JW Player’s powerful recommendations engine drives greater engagement and revenues by collecting more signals with high quality viewer interactions to help uncover relevant connections and make stronger recommendations. With minimal effort but huge impact, publishers can now easily leverage JW Player’s Recommendations engine by “flicking a switch.”

“JW player has built an enormous network of independent publishers that includes more than 2 million websites with over 1.3 billion unique viewers each month,” said JW Player Co-Founder and CEO Dave Otten. “This network uniquely positions JW Player to provide highly relevant video recommendations that leverages video consumption knowledge across our massive network. No other company has the footprint and scale to provide such an offering to network independent publications.”

The engine indexes a publisher’s content library and selects the best videos for each viewer based on clusters of viewer activity, content traits and what’s trending in the publisher’s network and across more than 2 million websites. These data-driven recommendations update in real-time, so higher engagement is achieved. The benefit is not only that videos suggested to viewers are personalized and more engaging, but also that they require much less effort than a human-curated playlist.

Recommendations also provides play lift across viewership:

  • More views & higher engagement
  • Greater opportunities for monetization
  • Efficient & intelligent curation
  • Publishers use fewer resources managing playlists

When Penske Media Corporation, a digital media, publishing, and information services company with web brands including Hollywood Life, WWD.com, Variety.com, began leveraging Recommendations for select videos embedded across the Hollywood Life domain, they saw an immediate increase in plays of by 200% in one month.

“JW Player’s data-driven recommendations tools were easy to implement and when we paired them with auto-advance, we saw immediate engagement and revenue gains,” said Gino Orlandini, director of video, Hollywood Life.

JW Recommendations can also power a search interface for websites and mobile apps, or can be used for article matching of video content. In addition, publishers leverage Recommendations wherever their viewers are:

  • In the JW7 Player Discovery Overlay
  • Built into Mobile, OTT apps, or JW Showcase
  • Customize a page widget near your player
  • Programmatically access recommended playlists via API (RSS & JSON)

Recently, influential interior design publishers Apartment Therapy, already using JW Player and Platform across their properties to to reach, grow and monetize video audiences, switched on Recommendations to fantastic results.

“Implementing recommended playlists has created a personalized experience for our audience as well as a profitable one for our company,” said Annie Carroll, general manager of video at Apartment Therapy. “With these playlists accounting for more than 50% of our views, our ad fill has increased significantly. Also, the viewer is now treated to a variety of content at the end of each video. They can curate what they would like to watch next. It’s a win-win for everyone.”