Advance Local Grows Video Revenue By Seven Figures Overnight with EX.CO’s Online Video Platform
GOAL: Create a new revenue stream by introducing video to audiences for the first time and helping them get acclimated to consuming it.
Results by the numbers
7-figure YoY
Revenue Lift*
10%
Average higher RPMs**
58M+
Player loads
*Within the first 24 hours. **When comparing month 1 to month 4.
Advance Local is one of the leading digital media and marketing groups, with brands–including NJ.com, Cleveland.com, MLive.com–reaching more than 52 million people throughout the U.S. across multiple platforms. Advance Local is part of Advance, a privately-held company founded in 1922 which is among the largest shareholders in Charter Communications, Warner Bros., Discovery, and Reddit.
EX.CO has transformed video into a significant revenue driver for us, far exceeding our expectations.They made video a reality for us when it wasn’t before, and their partnership has significantly boosted revenue via relevant contextual video recommendations. The success has been outstanding, and we’re confident in expanding our video strategy well into 2025.
The Challenge
As online traffic to publisher sites slowed in 2023, Advance Local sought to diversify its revenue streams, with video emerging as a key opportunity. Although the publisher had dabbled in video production to complement its editorial content, it wasn’t monetizing or scaling video effectively. Advance Local, which operates 18 news and information sites serving local communities, occasionally published videos on their YouTube channels and manually embedded the player into select articles. However, without a dedicated online video platform partner, this approach left plenty of room for improvement for Advance to meet its video monetization and engagement goals.
The Solution
Advance Local selected EX.CO’s award-winning online video platform for its automated, user-friendly approach—ideal for newsrooms already working hard to support content demands across multiple platforms with tight editorial deadlines. The publisher swiftly integrated EX.CO’s proprietary video player within its articles, placing it prominently within the content. The videos autoplay, are muted by default, and are easily dismissible or moveable, offering a seamless user experience.
A key component of EX.CO’s platform is its contextual video recommendation engine, which leverages large language models (LLM) to deliver the most relevant videos in real-time. This technology allows Advance Local to automatically scale video across its entire network without the need to produce custom content for each article or manually match articles with videos. The engine intelligently analyzes similarities between articles and video content, considering factors like sentiment, keywords, video length, title, recency, popularity, and media category. It also allows editorial teams to set specific rules and guidelines, enabling the engine to learn and optimize over time—a feature Advance Local found particularly valuable.
The recommended videos are sourced from EX.CO’s content marketplace, which offers videos from premium sources such as Bloomberg, Cheddar News, National Geographic, and more.
The Result
Advance Local was pleasantly surprised by the initial revenue results, which saw video revenue skyrocket from $0 to seven figures overnight, quickly making video a significant contributor to the publisher’s overall advertising revenue. The addition of video at scale has also provided new avenues of conversation for local and programmatic direct sales teams to engage with clients and agencies.
Today, Advance Local boasts over 59 million video player loads—a remarkable achievement in such a short time. Additionally, the publisher saw a 10% increase in average RPMs from month one to month four. This impressive success prompted Advance Local to expand EX.CO’s integration across its entire network of websites.
Looking ahead, Advance Local is looking to expand its video offering by delivering premium video solutions to subscribers, increasing the rollout to additional content sections, and leveraging advanced player functionality to continually improve user experience as measured by engagement.
Key Takeaways
Diversified revenue streams are critical for growth in today’s volatile environment.
Video can be an extremely lucrative revenue stream for publishers, even if they have limited video production capabilities or output.
EX.CO’s contextual video recommendation engine allows publishers to automatically scale video across its entire network without the need to produce custom content for each article or manually match articles with videos.
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