OTT Video Montization: Why Metadata Matters

Ever since YouTube started giving a portion of revenue to creators, the term “video monetization” has become common knowledge. Everyone knows you can make a video, publish it to an OTT platform like YouTube, and earn money from advertisers. Nevertheless, not every video turns into a revenue stream. One of the most overlooked aspects of monetization is how to use metadata. This is data about your video, including its category, tags, location and creation date. Here's why it matters.

Help Your Video Find an Audience

If all you do is upload a video, give it a thumbnail, and call it a day, you're missing out on tons of opportunities. Regardless of the platform you choose, there are other places where you can provide data about your video. The platform's search engines and even its recommendation algorithms use this data to determine who is most likely to enjoy your content. Leaving any field blank is leaving viewers on the table.

Netflix uses categories to facilitate finding new things to watch. YouTube is more likely to show you a video produced near your location, so tagging the filming location or the area of interest is a must. Spotify relies on genre data to serve up recommendations. You need to put as many tags on your content as possible so that it can be found more easily.

Track Your Video's Success

When you completely fill out all of the data fields related to your content, you'll also be able to track your video's progress more completely. Otherwise, you won't have anything to compare your content against. Variables like watch time and click-through rate on a cooking video will be wildly different from those of a video game playthrough. With proper data, you can compare your content's performance to similar productions to get an idea of how well you're performing.

Free Your Creativity

A common mistake new content creators make is to try to shoehorn keywords and phrases into titles. While it's wise to include certain terms in your title, don't do so at the expense of creativity. A more creative title could be the key to getting more clicks.

Metadata allows you to improve your video's search ranking without turning your title into keyword soup. You can even tag a video with multiple forms of the same question you expect your viewers to ask, which will lead more people to your cleverly titled video.

Find Advertisers Faster

Your viewers aren't the only ones that use data to find content. Advertisers are also looking for videos. An education company like Pearson would look for educational videos to sponsor. Tagging your video properly and providing extra data about your content makes it easier for advertisers to find you.

Another way to find advertisers and maximize the value of your content is to work with OTT experts. Lightcast provides you with a complete media cloud so you can send your content to multiple platforms simultaneously. We can even help you find sponsors. Request a callback from Lightcast or send us an email to learn more.