Critics are calling the move “100 percent cynical” and out of sync with audience demand, but more and more news outlets are switching to video content for revenue: advertisers adore the format, as ads can be cleverly intertwined with other content in videos, making them difficult to tune out. Americans are expected to spend 81 minutes a day watching digital video in 2019, up from 61 minutes in 2015, according to projections by research firm eMarketer.



“No site is ‘pivoting to video’ because of audience demand,” Josh Marshall, publisher of Talking Points Memo, tweeted earlier this month. “They are pivoting to video because the industry is in the midst of a monetization crisis.” Advertisers are willing to pay more to have their messages in videos because they think it’s harder for people to ignore them. Ad industry executives often refer to what’s called “banner blindness,” or web users who overlook banner ads at the top of websites.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Publishers Are Making More Video, Whether You Want It or Not