At Google and YouTube, we’re big fans of the news industry and recognise that technology companies and news organisations are truly part of the same information ecosystem--which is why we want to play our part in the fight towards more sustainable models for news in the future.
Today, through a unique partnership between YouTube and a number of leading European news publishers, we’re launching a new video solution specifically tailored to the needs of news industry; with a goal of reducing complexity and increasing reach and revenue potential, so newsrooms can focus on what matters most -- creating stories that educate and excite, engage and inspire.
We owe great thanks to the members of the Digital News Initiative who have helped to craft and customise the Player for Publishers; their feedback, questioning, and testing have helped us to build a great solution. We are delighted with the early feedback from the publishers across Europe who are already testing the solution, and we’re excited to be opening access to the tool out for all European news publishers.
"Providing a truly satisfactory video experience on the internet has always been a challenge, and it's getting increasingly complex with new use cases,” says German Frassa, Digital Product Director at Unidad Editorial, the publisher of Spanish newspapers El Mundo, Marca, and Expansión which is increasingly focusing on video and emerging formats. Creating engaging content is the main concern of news publishers everywhere, but in an increasingly complex marketplace, advertising, security, cross-device compatibility and content protection can put creativity on the back-burner.
In addition to Unidad Editorial and Prisa from Spain, the wave of pilot partners currently testing the Player include France’s France24, The Guardian (United Kingdom), ze.tt (Germany), Dagbladet (Norway), and Oe24 (Austria).
“We’re very excited to partner with the brand that is synonymous of digital video worldwide,” says Frassa, “To make sure that along with our content, we will be delivering the best experience to all our users as well."
YouTube powers video hosting, streaming, rights management including the use of Content ID, user analytics and monetization options for publishers, freeing up precious newsroom assets to focus on content creation, news-dissemination and the critical storytelling that we’ve come to expect from the free press.
Inspired by conversations with newsrooms across Europe, we developed the YouTube Player for Publishers, a new solution to provide a video hosting, streaming and ads management platform for publishers - powered by YouTube. Here’s how it works:
- Better connecting audiences with news videos: The YouTube Player is available across 1000’s of devices, globally, optimised for the best possible user experience
- Increasing control and maximising revenue: The new player gives publishers the option to control ad formats and ad load on their videos as well as giving priority sales rights across videos embedded in their own sites and applications.
- Reducing complexity, enhancing control The Player helps publishers simplify video infrastructure and reduce cost. Over time, we’ll work to help publishers respond in an evolving landscape of user-generated content for news as well.
“The player from YouTube provides us the best of many things: A terrific product for providing video to our audience, lower operating costs, access to continuous technical innovation, ease of distribution on both our own domains and YouTube's network, and flexible monetisation models,” says Stephan Granhaug, Executive Vice President Digital in Aller Media Norway, the owner of Dagbladet.
We’re thrilled that our partners across Europe are finding early success with the Player, and are eager to extend the invitation for additional European publishers to become involved as we’re just getting started. For more information on progress from the Digital News Initiative, please visit digitalnewsinitiative.com. Publishers interested in learning more can contact us via this form.
Posted by Ben McOwen Wilson, Director of Content Partnerships, YouTube