New Video Player on HubPages

1. STAFF

   HubPagesposted 18 months ago

   Hi all. Starting today, we will begin rolling out a new video player in the first in-content ad unit across all HubPages Network Sites. It will feature a video slideshow of articles on the site as well as advertisements. We’ve had success with this video player in other parts of the company and hope it will lead to higher author payouts once implemented across the HubPages Network.
   
   Here is an example from Dengarden News of how the video player will appear: https://dengarden.com/news/gorgeous-pantry-update.

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      OldRosesposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I don't see a video player and I still want to know how promoting staff-written articles will benefit regular HubPages authors like myself.  I have yet to see a single article written by a non-staff member promoted anywhere on the web.

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      1. STAFF

         HubPagesposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         The video player may take some time to appear on all sites, but the process is under way.
         
         All articles in the video player are written by our authors. The player automatically selects the latest articles accepted on the Network Site in question.

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      SerenityHaloposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I played around with looking at the niche sites on mobile. A few things:
      
      1. The Owlcation news section doesn’t make sense. It has early childhood stories that are more appropriate for the WeHaveKids site. Owlcation has more academic/college articles on it. I’m not sure the person who is in charge of the news section for Owlcation understands the niche.
      
      2. Page load times are very slow. Ads and pictures are struggling to load. It’s not a great user experience. This is the most important area for helping authors to get better payouts.
      
      3. There really shouldn’t be ads after every paragraph. It’s too much. Repeated ads really are annoying, despite what HP may have been told or what data you’re getting.
      
      4. Sometimes the new video player struggled to go to the page when I clicked it. It would make sense if it went to articles from the same author or a relevant/related author. Going to random new articles is too eclectic.
      
      5. Some of the niche site homepages have too many ads. It’s making it hard to find real content. I think things look better on desktop.
      
      6. Things are looking very clickbait-like. That can make it hard to build trust with users.

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      theraggededgeposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      On my browser, Vivaldi, it says, 'video embed unavailable'.

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      SerenityHaloposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I can confirm I received a boost in traffic and earnings from the video player. Two new articles got put into it, and they had far better initial traffic than the norm. I'm not sure if it'll have much sway on the articles for the long term, but it is nice to see an uptick in initial views.
      
      A surge with Android.Google tends to produce even more views than what I received, but it does seem this new feature for HP is a step in the right direction.

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   Glenn Stokposted 18 months ago

   This might be promising. The only thing I'm worried about is that it interferes with reading since it overlays the content. Although the X is easy to spot to remove the video, organic readers may not know they can do that.
   
   Nevertheless, as you mentioned, I look forward to seeing how this might lead to higher payouts.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I've started getting a lot of traffic (hundreds) from a niche site to a recently-published hub, which might be a good sign. We'll have to wait and see.

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         Glenn Stokposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         I’m keeping a eye on that too, but so far haven’t noticed much of a change from the usual daily traffic sources.

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            Kenna McHughposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            I noticed one of my niche sites is now ranking #2 daily and weekly.

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               Glenn Stokposted 18 months agoin reply to this

               For me, PairedLife has been ranking #2 (after Google) for the longest time. That’s nothing new. What has your result been compared to a month ago or a year ago?

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                  Kenna McHughposted 18 months agoin reply to this

                  Pinterest is #2 for the long term: month and year. It's been that way for the longest time.

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                     PaulGoodman67posted 18 months agoin reply to this

                     The search engine traffic dwarfs everything else for me on my sources list. The highest non-search engine traffic is from a niche at #10 but it's a fraction of what I get from Google etc.
                     
                     Maybe the new vid thing will change that, though I'm expecting the traffic boost from the niche to be temporary, assuming that's what's happening.

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   Brenda Arledgeposted 18 months ago

   Well if we have to have a video there...at least it does have links to a few articles.
   
   How often do these articles change and how does Hubpages decide in what article to display?

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   1. STAFF

      HubPagesposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      It's all done programmatically; the video player automatically pulls the most recently published articles into the slideshow.

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         Brenda Arledgeposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         Are these articles dependent on each niche site?
         
         And...
         No matter the quality.

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         1. STAFF

            HubPagesposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            Yes, the player only features articles on the same Network Site. Since all articles on Network Sites are held to a high standard, quality is not an issue.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 18 months agoin reply to this

         Hmm, I guess it provides an incentive for publishing new material. The downside is that the videos will get rotated out at some point to make way for new stuff.

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   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   Can you left-align it with the ad when it moves to the right sidebar on desktop?
   
   
   

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   ravirajan01posted 18 months ago

   Yes I think so.I saw one of these videos on Crime Wire some time back.

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   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   I wish it didn't split up my bulleted list at the top of articles.
   Is there any way of controlling positioning to keep it above capsules? I know ads don't see capsules, just HTML paragraph tags, but could a method be implemented to change the control character after which ads/video player are placed? I assume it's the paragraph "p" tag at the moment.

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7. 92

   EricDockettposted 18 months ago

   Can you give us some insight into how this widget decides where it will appear? In the articles I've looked at so far, I see it showing up as little as three lines of text into the article. This makes the article very hard to read and will encourage bounces back to the SERPs.
   
   If we know where it will appear maybe we can alleviate that to some extent.
   
   Also: Wouldn't it make more sense to have closely related articles appear in this widget rather than the newest? Most of the niche sites have become very diverse. A person who comes to an article about dog training isn't likely to care about an article about fish care and vice versa. Most people who care about heavy metal aren't interested in K-pop.
   
   If click-throughs are the goal, it seems related articles should appear.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 18 months ago

   Fingers crossed it works!
   
   I have a recently published work that's showing a lot of traffic from the niche it's in, I'm guessing that's the new vid!?!?

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   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   Time on page seems to have increased, so I guess some people are watching the video.
   
   
   

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    eugbugposted 18 months ago

    The video appears to be right aligned, so if it can't be left aligned, maybe the ad above it can be right aligned? Or could it be scaled to the size of the ad (which seems to be a fixed size). In any case it looks really untidy when it moves to the right sidebar. If ads aren't going to be minimised, maybe at least the layout could be made neater?

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