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Sean Maher, Director of Business Development, Australia & New Zealand at VideoElephant, talks to your host Vahe Arabian of State of Digital Publishing about the state of video distribution. Sean discusses the services that VideoElephant provides, how they compete with broadcasters that offer their own streaming, the challenges that video distribution face, and how much video needs to be integrated in the content that publishers provide.
Episode Highlights:
- Sean Maher introduces what VideoElephant is.
- Sean discusses his personal professional background.
- Has specializing helped Sean better understand specific challenges?
- What does the role of a ‘sense maker’ involve?
- What have the roadblocks mostly been with video distribution?
- What has Sean’s experience been like with some of the younger Generation Z publishers?
- How does he feel it has been competing with broadcasters that have their own streaming offerings?
- Sean talks about video strategies in Australia.
- What is the value that video offers publishers?
- How does the Google News algorithm to favor original news reporting effect VideoElephant’s efforts?
- What are some examples of how publishers can understand what works for them?
- Is he finding any differences in strategies across other platforms, such as social media?
- How will advertising play into video distribution?
- What does the future of video content look like to Sean Maher?
3 Key Points:
- Times for releasing particular content is important, such as typical times people are going to work or coming home from work.
- Identify journalist champions for your content and make sure that editorial leaders are driving the content.
- Make sure there is video in at least 40% of your articles from internal content and third-party content. The best practice is to lift that number up to 60%.
Tweetable Quotes:
- (VideoElephant) “We are a major aggregator now. We’ve got around 2 million videos. We are bringing this huge raft of fresh content with brands that probably have never been seen in Australia before, but are really high quality.” – Sean Maher
- (Sense Maker) “Someone who can look at the vast information out there and work with editorial and work with sales teams to untangle it and find solutions for what will really work and make sense.” – Sean Maher
- “Companies need to start thinking a little bit in a safe zone of experimentation again, and not just sort of sticking in the same old approaches to video in particular that they have been doing for the last few years.” – Sean Maher
