Future of TV Briefing: How search stands to play a bigger part in digital video strategies

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how platforms like TikTok and Pinterest are providing opportunities for search-oriented video approaches.

In search of views
Streaming’s viewership share continues to surge
WTF is the Video Privacy Protection Act?
Tech giants’ NFL ambitions, Hollywood’s production level, TikTok’s creator overcrowding and more

In search of views

The key hits:

Gen Z audiences are increasingly using TikTok as a search engine.
Pinterest’s video platform caters to search-driven viewership.
Publishers like Refinery29 and Tastemade are taking advantage of search-based video behavior.

YouTube is not only the biggest digital video platform on the market but also the second biggest search engine. And yet search does not play an outsized role in creators’ and publishers’ video strategies beyond YouTube. But maybe that’s about to change.

Famed for its content recommendation algorithm, TikTok’s search functionality took the spotlight recently. Nearly 40% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. turn to TikTok and Instagram for search queries instead of Google Search and Google Maps, a Google executive said at a conference earlier this month.

Meanwhile Pinterest — as much a visual search engine as a scrapbooking site — remains committed to establishing itself as a digital video destination. Last week the platform hired YouTube’s global head of original programming Nadine Zylstra to be Pinterest’s global head of programming and originals.

The spread of search-driven video viewership beyond YouTube would appear to be welcome news for video publishers like Vice Media Group’s Refinery29 and Tastemade that produce the types of utility-based videos — such as shopping guides and cooking how-tos — that people are likely to seek out through search queries rather than rely on platforms’ recommendation engines to surface.

“Refinery29 are experts at service content. We want to deliver actionable content to our audience, which really aligns with Pinterest’s direction of what they want to achieve as well,” said Tamar Riley, vp of audience and content strategy for Refinery29 and i-D. In June, Refinery29’s audience on Pinterest spanned 61 million people, according to a VMG spokesperson.

Of course, not all videos cater to being queried through search. But that doesn’t mean search-related tactics do not apply to videos in general entertainment categories like comedy. Adding captions and text to videos, for example, is considered by industry experts to be a potential way to give platforms’ algorithms more information about a video to boost its appearance in search results. “We know for Facebook that has always been important in terms of uploading the caption file for that reason,” said an executive at a media company that produces general entertainment videos.

Video viewers on Pinterest, in particular, have shown a penchant for seeking out videos through search. Having posted more than 40,000 videos to Pinterest and with 15 million followers on the platform, food-and-travel publisher Tastemade has seen that audiences’ behavior on the platform is “very search-oriented,” said Lauren Arso, head of content for social at Tastemade. A Tastemade spokesperson declined to share its monthly viewership figures for Pinterest but said that, on average, 17.5% of Pinterest’s global monthly …read more

Source:: Digiday