"JW Player has allowed us to professionalize video delivery and monetization, allowing us to generate sustained growth in the number of views, impressions, and revenue. JW Player allows us to reach different sources of demand and formats to which we didn’t have access before."
Peruvian newspaper El Comercio has been publishing the most important events & news of the day since its founding 181 years ago in 1839. Since going digital in 1997, the publisher has increasingly used video to tell engaging and compelling stories for their readership of 120,000+ print readers and growing online audience.
The Challenge
While publishing both in print and online, and increasingly using video, El Comerico has had to find new ways to monetize their growing library of content.
Switching to online video player JW Player in early 2021 provided the publisher with new opportunities to monetize. The brand set an aggressive goal to grow their video revenue from 4% in 2020 to 10% in 2021, with a goal to grow video views 40% YoY. El Comercio’s challenge at the beginning of the year was to increase both reach and revenue in a scalable way across their digital media landscape.
Why El Comercio Chose JWP
With 30,000+ videos already available across their eight editorial websites, the publisher first needed a solution to increase the reach of the existing content. The JWP recommendations engine analyzes billions of signals from viewing activity across the JW Player network to recommend curated playlists from selected video libraries, customized at the individual viewer level.
Additionally, JW Player’s unique header bidding is built directly into the player. Player Bidding helps to reduce latency and improve programmatic ad demand.
How JWP Responded
Using JW Player’s Recommendation Engine, El Comercio was able to incrementally increase viewership. “The player is able to suggest new videos and increase plays, thanks to the recommendations engine,” Diego Peralta, Director of Digital Products & Programmatic at El Comercio said.
El Comercio further increased plays (and ad impressions) across their already available videos with header bidding. Beginning in the spring of 2021, JW Player’s ad pod functionality allowed the publisher to also increase the number of ads shown per play.
The Result
Since switching to JW Player at the beginning of the year, El Comercio has seen a 63.81% increase in plays—to date, beating their 40% internal YoY growth goal. By using a recommendations engine to generate follow-on plays and increase viewership per user, they’ve been able to further monetize existing audiences. And with an effective strategy set up for ad pods by increasing pre-roll and mid-roll ads, El Comercio has increased their ad impressions by 107.44% since the beginning of the year. According to Peralta, video has grown in revenue 90% YoY with JW Player representing 60% of that growth.