Carwow scales video revenue with EX.CO’s contextual recommendation engine
Goal
Find a trustworthy online video platform (OVP) to enhance user experience and drive revenue growth by scaling video content delivery and monetization across the site.
Results by the numbers
higher revenue (H1 vs. H2)
higher gross RPM lift (Q3 vs. Q4)
higher impressions QoQ
lower negative interaction rate
Carwow Studios Ltd. (formerly known as Autovia) owns motoring media brands including Auto Express, DrivingElectric, Carbuyer, and Evo. They focus on different aspects of the automotive world: Auto Express is the UK’s number one car news and review title, DrivingElectric focuses on electric vehicles, Carbuyer offers advice and reviews for car buyers, and Evo specializes in performance cars.
Delivering relevant, high-quality experiences is at the heart of what we do, especially when our audience is actively researching major purchase decisions like buying a car. EX.CO’s contextual video recommendations help us surface the right content at the right moment, seamlessly aligning with each article. It’s been a powerful way to increase engagement and keep our readers focused on the journey ahead.
The Challenge
As one of the largest online car news and review site groups in Europe, Carwow Studios Ltd. serves millions of auto enthusiasts. With rapid growth, the company needed a scalable video strategy that would not only enhance the user experience but also unlock new revenue opportunities.
Carwow Studios Ltd. was searching for a reliable OVP that could support their monetization goals while also delivering relevant video content that matched user intent across a vast range of car-focused editorial pages. Traditional recommendation tools lacked the precision and contextual awareness needed for a high-intent audience.
The Solution
Carwow Studios Ltd. turned to EX.CO’s online video platform and leveraged its large language models (LLM)-powered contextual recommendation engine to deliver the right video content at the right moment. The engine vectorizes text, calculates the similarities between articles and available video content, and then ranks the results to deliver the fastest and highest quality recommendations possible—automatically and at scale.
This allowed Carwow to significantly increase video coverage across its site without additional editorial resources. By aligning video content with the written page, the platform not only improved user engagement, but also created more opportunities for monetization through EX.CO’s built-in ad capabilities. Because EX.CO is demand agnostic, Carwow was also able to plug in its own direct demand sources—maximizing fill rates and revenue potential without being locked into a single monetization pathway.
The Result
Since implementing EX.CO’s contextual recommendation engine, Carwow Studios Ltd. has seen a substantial lift in video engagement and monetization performance. In fact, Carwow saw a 120% increase in revenue between H1 and H2 and a 154% lift in gross RPMs between Q3 and Q4. Carwow Studios Ltd. also earned 33% more impressions quarter over quarter and lowered negative interactions with the video player by 37%. The seamless delivery of contextually relevant videos has enhanced the site’s user experience, keeping audiences more engaged and on-site longer—especially during key research moments.
EX.CO’s technology empowered the Carwow team to automate a process that was previously manual and limited in scale, unlocking new revenue streams while supporting their core mission: to help users feel more confident, informed, and in control of the car-buying process.
Key Takeaways
EX.CO is able to drive more revenue with higher efficiency for publishers.
Delivering videos that align with page content is a powerful way to increase user engagement and trust—especially for high-intent audiences.
EX.CO’s LLM-powered recommendation engine eliminates manual work and enables publishers to scale video strategies.
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