Ricky Sutton, Author at Oovvuu

You have access to Oovvuu – congratulations! Now what?

Our mission is to enable you to put a relevant and compelling video in every article in a single click. Our tools do this and that’s why we are the #1 video recommendation engine used by publishers around the world.

This is a how to, showing you how best to utilise Oovvuu’s powerful tools in your newsroom.

First, you need to sign-up at compass.oovvuu.media. If you haven’t already done that, start there.

If you publish on WordPress, you benefit from Oovvuu being WP’s official video partner. More here.

If you use a different CMS, you can still sign up to use our powerful APIs. Contact us for our developer tools.

Or you can start right now by using the Oovvuu web platform, by signing up online.

So, how do I get started?

Write your article as you would normally. It doesn’t matter whether you are using the classic WordPress editor or the newer Gutenberg block editor.

Your dev team will have deployed the plugin. Before you can use it, you need to register with your work e-mail address at compass.oovvuu.media. It only takes a minute or two.

Once done, you will be asked to authenticate the plugin within WordPress. It will look something like this, in the right navigation of WordPress.

Click the link and you will be taken to your WordPress profile, where you can scroll down to the bottom and authenticate the plugin. You only need to do this once and you will be logged into Oovvuu forever.

Return to the post you were editing, drag the Oovvuu plugin to the top, and you will see your latest viewing analytics and a list of all the most recent videos that you can use.

Now you are ready to use Oovvuu to find the right video for your article.

First, click the green Get Videos button.

Oovvuu’s tech will instantly scan your headline and article to understand what it is about and then search through hundreds of thousands of videos to find matches and recommend them back to you.

We do not automatic insert into articles because we believe journalists can judge best what is relevant and know how they want to craft their story.

Sometimes, you will want the video to explicitly and exactly match the story. At other times, you might want a that is more of an explainer, or take the reader on a deeper journey, adding richness to the piece.

It’s up to you. Oovvuu in WordPress surfaces video you probably never knew existed until that moment and make adding the video you choose as simple as one click.

We recognise journalists are the experts and technology is just the tool.

So, every time you, and all the other hundreds of journalists using Oovvuu every day select a video, we capture that and use it to teach our recommendation technology.

This uses machine learning, and there is a lot of talk about about it, but Oovvuu uses the never-ending news cycle as a catalyst to teach technology how to make better and better suggestions.

That’s the clever stuff. All you need to do is click Get Videos. A box will pop up with asking which of the keywords in the article are most important.

Click on the ones that matter, and it will refine the search to the videos you want.

You can add your own keywords too if you don’t see what you want.

Once you are happy, click Recommend Videos and the AI will return with the best matches. You can then drag and drop into the positions you want them to appear in the page.

At Oovvuu, we believe that technology can be learned, but trust must be earned. That’s why we put journalists at the heart of everything we do, with the machines just being there to help. It’s why we only work with trusted publishers and broadcasters, like you.

A journalist creates an article > Oovvuu’s machine technology curates the recommendation > a journalist validates the recommendation > and then the thousands or millions of people who watch the video confirm it.

Oovvuu videos are usually click to play, meaning the viewer has to click for it to start. To ensure people opt to watch, the video must be of the highest quality and relevant to the article.

The hero

The best performing position for a video is at the top of the article, below the headline and above the first paragraph, a position known as the hero.

Videos embedded in this position typically attract a play rate of ~33 per cent. That means a third of the people who read the article will watch the video too.

Fourth paragraph (graf)

If the video is a second video on the same topic, if it is more background, if it is an explainer, or more implicitly relevant rather than explicit, we recommend putting it between the fourth and five paragraph, or graf.

Videos embedded here typically attract an 11 per cent click to play rate.

NB: If you add videos in both positions, they tend to compound, meaning that an article with two strong videos in the hero and fourth spot will command a combined 44 per cent view rate.

If your publication delivers 100 million page views, that means you can expect more than 40 million video streams per month with Oovvuu.

Oovvuu makes browsing through the latest and greatest videos easy.

Every minute of every day, the Oovvuu plugin is being updated with new video from more than 400 of the world’s best providers.

The Latest Videos module in the plugin shows you these in the moments after they are syndicated, from anywhere in the world, for you to discover and embed in a heartbeat.

Super-users have learned to use Oovvuu’s powerful search functions to find videos they know will be popular and write articles around them.

Do you think a lunchtime story about Elon Musk’s latest space mission will get your readers animated?

Just go to the Oovvuu plugin, type Elon Musk into the search field and it will return all the results you need.

Click Add To Story and the video will attach to your article.

Go ahead and fill in the headline and write your article.

Don’t beat yourself up about it, we have a solution for everyone.

The first thing to do is to head over to compass.oovvuu.media to get signed up. (Make sure you keep an eye on your junk mail in case the authorisation email gets sent there by mistake.)

One approved, you will get access to the Oovvuu video catalogue, real time analytics, a very clever matching engine and embed codes for hundreds of thousands of videos, all cleared for you to use.

Latest Videos gives you to the second updates on videos as soon as they become available, together with an embed code you can grab and use.

Every video view you create will be captured by our real-time analytics, and you can even see how many people are watching and set goals to see how you are tracking to target.

The web platform also has the most powerful search and matching tools available.

Selecting Match takes you to a page where you can cut and paste your article and headline, or just add a Keyword Search term to find the videos you need.

You can watch any video in this interface and when you have found what you want to add, click the Embed icon.

Everything you see, you are allowed to use as Oovvuu has done the deals to make them available to you behind the scenes.

The embed code will be added to your clipboard so you can cut and paste it into your article wherever you want it.

Looks good

The first step to becoming an Oovvuu publisher is to sign up at our web platform and let us know who you are.

Let’s get started

Oovvuu in WordPress – a publisher gets off to a flying start

Advertising, Content, Customers, Insights

A leading Australian publisher has become the first news site in the world to deploy WordPress’ groundbreaking Oovvuu plugin for video.

The New Daily coverage included video from reporters at the scene

The New Daily in Melbourne, has integrated the plugin to its news site and trained its newsroom staff to use it to find relevant videos as news breaks.

When a blast devastated Beirut, the Oovvuu plugin gave the team instant access to breaking news video from the world’s top video sources who were on the scene including Reuters, The Associated Press and The Canadian Press.

Carley Olley, the company’s PM Editor, said: “The plugin is a super easy way to get video into our stories, and we can do it without leaving our editing screen. This means more videos are used, which is a win for us and for readers.

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Oovvuu’s real-time analytics reveal which videos resonate

“I’ve also found the analytics extremely useful, both as a way to measure how well particular stories are doing, but also to help me decide which stories to go after, as I can see which are resonating with our readers.”

Hundreds of thousands of Australian readers were exposed to the latest video on the world’s biggest news event of the day right in the articles they read and trust.

It’s an instant way to see the success or otherwise of a particular story and video.”
Carley Olley, PM Editor

And in the newsroom, they were able to track the story with real-time video analytics for the first time.

The deployment was the first for the Oovvuu plugin since the Australian company was selected by WordPress as its video technology partner.

Oovvuu provides nearly 400 distinct news feeds and is now working with WordPress and others to deploy its news video plugin to publishers worldwide, reaching billions more viewers.

The plugin is built directly into all versions of WordPress and WordPress VIP and delivers video recommendations into the editing screens for both the classic and Gutenberg versions of WordPress.

Since launching the Oovvuu WordPress plugin a month ago, The New Daily has doubled video views and created a lucrative new advertising opportunity.

Miles Finlay, product and programmatic ad lead, said: “Oovvuu video has improved our offering in the open exchanges and enabled us to complete high value programmatic and direct deals.

The premium nature of the video means we exceed agencies’ expectations with a high 90 per cent viewability rate and strong completions and conversions.”
Miles Finlay, programmatic ad lead

Before Oovvuu, video was relatively new to the Melbourne-based commercial team.

Oovvuu’s head of ad quality and operations Jimmy Fisher noticed they were able to quickly scale video ad solutions across multiple verticals, including entertainment, lifestyle, sport, travel and finance.

And the results have been terrific, with viewability rates of 90 per cent, a third higher than global benchmarks and healthy ad yields and sellthrough.

“It’s been great to see The New Daily scale up video use. It provides advertisers with options,” he said.

The plugin was deployed directly into The New Daily’s WordPress account by their internal development team.

The entire project was delivered in less than an hour and was live after two days of testing.

They also became the first publisher in the world to go live after the Oovvuu WordPress plugin announcement in July.

Oovvuu provides video from 400 trusted sources, covering major news as it happens

If you are a WordPress publisher and you are looking for video to enhance your articles, contact us.

Oovvuu is supporting publishers with premium video for free

Content, Customers, News, Uncategorized

Publishers find themselves in a conundrum amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Reporting the news has never been more important and page views are surging, yet advertising has gone into hibernation with the public in lockdown.

“Publishers are rich in audience yet poor in revenue at a time of unprecedented global demand,” said Oovvuu founder Ricky Sutton. “We felt we had to do something,”

Oovvuu emerged from the video team at Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald with a mission to help publishers put a trusted and relevant video in every article.

A few years later, it is VC funded and unlike the media companies it serves, it is not exposed to the advertising headwinds.

As a result, the company is offering video from its broadcast partners including Reuters, Associated Press and others to publishers for free.

“These are strange times for all of us in news, but we find ourselves in a particularly unusual and unique position,” said Sutton, a former reporter and News Corp executive.

“We are well funded and incredibly deep in the quality video that every publisher needs to report the biggest story in a century. We can do some real good here.”

More than 100 broadcasters distribute video through Oovvuu, with a one-click embed code made available exclusively to premium publishers. Thousands of videos are added daily.

To support the initiative, Oovvuu has created an online portal for publishers to access the videos. There are feeds on the virus, as well as 70 other genres, from parenting to climate change.

Oovvuu then helps publishers integrate their pre-roll advertising, and provides backfill advertising support to generate vital revenue for publishers at this difficult time.

“We help publishers make money from video doing what they do best, reporting the news,” Sutton added. “Our goal in common with everyone has always been to make money, but in this time, we can step up to publishers’ needs and provide all our video to them for free. All we seek is a revenue share from any advertising revenue that is generated.”

Publishers can sign up for a no cost no strings trial at https://portal.oovvuu.com/login. Advertising integration queries can be made to Oovvuu via ricky@oovvuu.com

News costs money, not having it costs more, as we are all learning

Advertising, Content, Customers, Insights, News, Technology

When I was a journalist, media was elementary. Binary. If you didn’t have the best front page, millions of paying readers missed the scoop their money deserved. The pressure was intimidating and taught me the concept of survival of the fittest. Moaning just didn’t cut it.

Later, I was news editor with a global team and the most-read front page on the planet. I rubbed shoulders with smart, uncompromising editors, whose names and reputations were indelibly linked to their papers’ century-old brands. Together, we toiled under a shared anxiety for ever-bigger scoops.

Over this past decade, the Fourth Estate has been battered. Relentless attacks from Google and Facebook, hiding behind Section 230, have left their mark. Fighting a one-sided battle has left the once-proud media lion resembling an injured gazelle.

We are seeing the consequences. The near-collapse of local news reporting, the ensuing crisis in public trust, the rise of fake news and political polarisation, a spike in hate speech and intolerance, clickbait and collapsing CPMs. These are symptoms of a neutered media – felt most keenly in local news – and caused by the unchecked rise of Google and Facebook.
Ricky Sutton, Oovvuu CEO

Now this is changing. Scales have been removed from our eyes and we are in the dawn of a media revival, driven by the unerring human values of trust, brand and truth. Facebook is blinded by tech and a myopic perspective that doesn’t care. History that will judge them. Google knows it though, and let me tell you why.

When I first wrote a version of this article in 2017, I proposed a plan. It was before Cambridge Analytica, before we knew the shocking extent of Facebook’s data abuses, before YouTube’s paedophilia rings, Google’s sex scandals and billion-dollar global advertiser boycotts.

We had created Oovvuu a few years earlier to help journalism by partnering broadcasters and publishers to put a relevant video in every article in the world. Every broadcaster was handpicked as a trusted source. Every publisher too. Together, we would create a new, video-led way of reporting the news, and create trust on a scale that would rival the duopoly.

Once achieved, we would use it to repatriate billions from Facebook and Google back to the journalists and broadcasters reporting the world.

We went public in a keynote at The International News Media Association, announcing 100 broadcasters had joined our mission, providing feeds of breaking news video and long form programming to publishers. More than $2 billion of constantly-updating news video, available to any trusted publisher via a simple-to-use, one-touch technology.

Partners included the BBC, The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, PBS, Deutsche Welle, ITN, Euronews, Press Association, Canadian Press, AAP, Techcrunch, The Guardian, ABC Australia, 24.com Africa, NDTV India, TRT Turkey, VPRO Holland and many more.

Publishers there to listen included Schibsted, The Guardian, News Corp, The New York Times, The Irish Times, Trinity Mirror, Sanoma, RussMedia, Mail Online, The FT, Axel Springer, The UK Telegraph, Archant, Newsquest, Newsweek.

At the time, the media industry resembled two elephants in a sea of ants. The New York Times and Guardian were vanishingly small in comparison to the duopoly, yet just the top 26 publishers working together had a larger audience than Facebook. It felt like there was something we could do.
Ricky Sutton, Oovvuu CEO

Oovvuu set out to mobilise the media industry to work together to create a new, bigger and better elephant, this time based on truth, brand and trust. A few years on, we are gaining traction.

Many of the world’s largest publishers have since joined, and we are in contract negotiations with more than 100 more. We have opened offices in New York and London, we have staff in San Francisco, Mumbai and Cape Town.

Our tech has also transformed. In 2015, when we launched Compass, a tool that embeds in reporters’ workflows that can read articles, watch videos and match them together in less than a second, it so impressed IBM Watson and Amazon, they both funded us. Soon after Intel joined.

Now, tens of millions of people in 143 countries benefit from breaking news video they could not previously access. News articles are being enhanced, publishers have access to the video they need and broadcasters are distributing to new markets in an instant.

More videos are going in more articles more quickly, with more than 250 journalists using Compass daily to make better recommendations. We didn’t set out to be a poster child for machine learning, and be invited to speak at the largest conferences in the world, but it happened.

You see, we are journalists, and it is in our DNA to learn. When we keynoted at IBM Think in Las Vegas (above) to 35,000 engineers I opened by saying: “Technology can be learned, but trust must be earned. I know that because I am speaking at the world’s largest AI conference, and I can’t write a single line of code.”

We are not alone in learning. The world has also learned what Facebook is all about.

The truth was revealed by six devastating exposes in The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired and Der Spiegel, and more are emerging every day. Billions have been wiped off the company’s value, Zuckerberg has terrified the world with robotic apologies to the US Congress, and across the world, demands for anti-trust action to break them up are gaining momentum.

The likelihood of which, Dina Srinivasan, entrepreneur turned anti-trust specialist told the Digiday podcast, is “imminent and very high. The market is spewing out warped outcomes and tweaks at 10,000ft need to be made”.

Facebook will continue to make money, like bad companies before it, but it has been exposed. The halo has tilted and now, well, it’s just another greedy company hiding behind a friendly logo.

Facebook’s woes have been a heat shield for Google, which does all the same things on a far bigger scale. YouTube has taken some hits, and responded with the usual empty apologies and promises, but Google as a whole is just six headlines from the same fate. Mountain View is worried, as it should be.

I know this personally because they reached out to me, and media leaders I work with, asking what they should do.

This creates a point in time opportunity for the media, Google and the world, and it starts with maths. Google is meant to be good at maths, so there’s hope.

A billion people watch news video daily. Typically, they watch two videos each a day. Non-Oovvuu publishers only have video in seven per cent of their articles. Oovvuu increases it to 40 per cent.

The Oovvuu solution means more people, watching more video. With US publishers boasting enormous numbers of page views, and years of trust, this is a perfect marriage to create brand safety, with engaged audiences at the duopoly’s scale.

Google had 172 billion page views in November 2019. Facebook had 42 billion. The top 50 publishers in America combined had 98 billion.

Trusted videos, in trusted environments at these scales, with the premium CPMs of video, represents a business-changing revenue of $100 million a year in new revenue for the larger publishers. That’s be the difference between more closures and mergers, and a sustainable future reporting the news.

Google wrote $42 billion in ad revenue in 2018. Facebook a further US$34 billion. One in every four dollars came from video, and eMarketer says it be one in three soon, so, shifting billions to publishers and broadcasters for reporting the news in video can be done.

That sum is sufficient to end the scourge of fake news, reboot the media earnings, make truth and information free and distributed, and it is in the best interests of Google to help as the anti-trust clouds gather.

There is nothing safer than a Reuters video in a New York Daily News article, or the latest on a virus pandemic from AFP in The Chicago Tribune. The world needs trust for our society to maintain stability.

Media is our mission, technology is just our tool. Brands and agencies hurt by the scandals of the past two years also know they need brand safe content and engaged audiences at scale. We know this because the three largest in the world, Group M, IPG and Dentsu Aegis all have trading deals with us.

All that is needed now is for publishers to step up…

Oovvuu’s documentaries will transform your video earnings and engagement

Advertising, Content, Customers, Insights, News

Oovvuu believes that news media reporting will increasingly reliant on video, that is why we work so hard to ensure every publisher has a relevant video for every article.

Typically, this involves embedding a short clip to a news article, telling the story in greater depth, and creating a lucrative new monetisation method via a pre-roll ad.

Pre-roll video ads – ads that run before a video – command ad prices up to 20x that of standard display, meaning the value of every page view is transformed when video is added.

People love it. Editors love it. Advertisers love it.

Some progressive publishers though are going a step further, and creating Netflix-like video hubs where their visitors can access brilliant and thought-provoking documentaries.

Oovvuu provides thousands of long form films, across multiple genres, to enable any publisher to make the leap into long form.

Play Stuff

The best execution we have seen with the Oovvuu catalogue has been Play Stuff, the video section of New Zealand’s premiere publisher Stuff.

visit play stuff

Oovvuu has also built video on demand hubs at West Australian Newspapers in Perth, and Media24 in South Africa.

Average viewing time on our hubs across the world is 16 minutes, and with mid-roll ads adding to pre-rolls, they can generate 4x the revenue of a standard pre-roll.

Hubs also extend reader engagement with news sites into the weekends and evenings.

If you are interested in exploring a hub solution, drop us a line.

To set the scene, these are 10 most watched Oovvuu documentaries so far in 2020.

The Whale

The true story of Luna, a young, wild killer whale who tries to befriend people on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. Filled with love and bitter sweet, it charts the difficult relationship between man and nature. Narrated by Ryan Reynolds.

More Than Bees:

Fifty years ago, Einstein warned: “If bees disappear, mankind has only four years left to live.” Without bees, there is no pollination, and fruit and vegetables could disappear. Billions of bees have died in the past 15 years. How worried should we be?

The Thread:

In the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing, social media became a factory for accusations and rampant speculation. The Thread pieces together interviews, posts, Tweets and YouTube videos to reconstruct the terror attack through the hysteria of the internet.

Vlast:

When Russia’s richest oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to be more democratic, he was arrested, convicted and his oil company seized. The film traces his dramatic rise and fall at the hands of Putin’s secret services.

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story:

Lee Atwater is a political rogue who mentored George W Bush and led the Republican party to historic victories, make liberal a dirty word and transforming the way America votes. Viewed through the lens of Trump’s Presidency, it explores his role in America’s shift to the right.

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer:

Six degrees of separation is a fascinating idea, that everyone in the world can be connected in just a few steps. What if this isn’t a myth? What if a network theory also applies to viruses, terrorism and fashion trends? How can we use such knowledge?

Missing Presumed Dead:

While passing an Australian antique shop, filmmaker Gerard Reed happened upon a wallet belonging to a World War 1 German soldier. Fascinated by the find, he decided to investigate and learn the fate of the German soldier through the mists of time.

Frontline Fighting: Battling ISIS:

Three untrained British volunteers with no family connections to the Middle East heed the call to take up arms with Kurdish fighters to reclaim a besieged town from ISIS. Like many called to arms, they find themselves entirely unprepared for the raw atrocities of combat.

Inside The Russian Info War Machine:

Russia’s information war machine is gearing up. From state owned media to shadowy hackers and trolls, a new army is pushing the agenda, manipulating public opinion, undermining democratic governments and attempting to alter world events, but how does it all work?

Digital Addicts:

Children are becoming addicted to mobiles, harming their development and causing possible long-term damage. That’s the story, but what are the facts? Medical experts follow young patients to explore how their brains are affected by constant exposure to screens.

Oovvuu and publishers launch global ad solution for video monetisation

Advertising, Customers, Insights, Technology

Publishers usually ask us to help them increase the amount of video they deliver, because they want to be more competitive, or report the news better, but the more we delve into the detail, it eventually boils down to money.

Oovvuu has a proven track record of growing publishers’ video traffic by as much as 30x, which is the right strategy as the video advertising market is already US$52 billion and rising 40% year over year (source: Interactive Advertising Bureau).

Many publishers though have a shock learning as traffic rises, which is that getting to those buckets of advertising gold is harder to access than it first appeared. The are several reasons:

Facebook and Google’s YouTube have used their monopolies to soak up as much as 90 per cent of the advertising supply.
Publisher sales teams have failed to recognise the complexity of selling video ads, versus say display.
Agencies and buyers are often overly bullish, promising to divert spend to publishers, which then doesn’t happen, and
Programmatic advertising, while appearing to be simple, is in fact entirely reliant on the Google ad stack and rarely provides commercially relevant CPMs.

It sounds hopeless, but it’s not. Publishers are actually well set for a video future, for four indisputable reasons:

A billion people watch news video daily, and want more.

Publishers need more video to meet demand.

Broadcasters have video but needed global, instant distribution.

Advertisers wanted brand safe environments, and engaged audiences at scale.

It’s this last point that Oovvuu realised needed a different solution.

Typically, publishers’ video ad sales fall into two groups:

About 30% of ad inventory is sold at premium CPMs by the internal sales team, known as direct sales. This is high yielding, but expensive and time-consuming to do.

Another 30% is sold programmatically, that is automatically delivered via integrations with third party ad supply companies. This is easier and cheaper to integrate, but the ads are typically low yielding. More often than not, they are uncommercially useful to publishers.

The rest of the ads go sold. A disaster.

Oovvuu realised publishers needed a third way to sell ads, to fill the unsold inventory via a backfill solution, so we took a playbook from the more progressive publishing groups around the world.

Publishers have begun to realise that to compete with the scale of the duopoly, they must work together, to create a consortium that can collectively bargain for a share of ad spend. Negotiate once at scale, with distributed benefits. A good example is The Ozone Project in London.

In South Africa where Oovvuu has grown publisher video traffic more than 30x in the past two years, agencies and publishers dropped historical enmities to ask Oovvuu to create a single advertising solution for them.

Now, Media24, The Local News Network, Business Insider SA, All4Women, Caxton Magazines, TisoBlackStar, The Independent, The Daily Maverick and across more than 100 publications have joined forces in Oovvuu’s first video private marketplace.

Run by Oovvuu’s head of advertising success James Fisher, and powered by Rubicon Project, it makes it easy for marketers to access premium brand safe and highly viewable video inventory across all the publishers and genres, within a single deal ID and a click of a button.

Since June 2019, local agency groups including Group M, Dentsu Aegis and IPG Media Brands have been actively running video deals through here.

Most importantly, they are seeing better results in key performance metrics like viewability, completion and click through rates than they are on other ad formats and partners.

Feedback includes:

Wow, this is really impressive, haven’t seen such good performance in a while – Group M South Africa

When compared to other partners the Oovvuu click through rate achieved is quite above theirs, which is great to see – Dentsu South Africa

We are really happy with the performance of view rates, this is a fantastic cost per view – IPG Media Brands South Africa

Oovvuu achieves market leading results by delivering a great user experience.

All Oovvuu videos are user initiated. That means they are click to play, rather than autoplay. While this means video views fall, it requires an engaged audience to earn a play, and therefore commands higher yields.
Oovvuu video is premium and highly engaging. We only work with broadcasters like the BBC, Euronews, The Associated Press and more meaning people trust what they see, and
We set a high bar on contextuality, meaning the Oovvuu video you find in a page will relevant. We can do this because we have one of the world’s largest content catalogues across more than 60 genres.

The proof is in the numbers.

This service is currently only available via programmatic unreserved deals, for any bespoke, direct or guaranteed video deals. Oovvuu inventory is also available for the publishers to sell directly.

For more information or to submit your interest please contact james.fisher@oovvuu.com, chris@oovvuu.com or adops@oovvuu.com