Video personalization engine IRIS.TV has helped The Hollywood Reporter- Billboard Media Group more than double its video views from 80 million in October ’16 to 210 million in February ’17. Most of the viewership is on owned and operated properties. In a briefing, John Amato, President, Entertainment Group and Michael Palmer, GM, Video, told me that the key has been using IRIS.TV’s technology to drive longer session lengths with viewers watching two to four videos instead of just one.

John and Michael cited IRIS.TV’s ability to create personalized video recommendations for users that extend far beyond a curated playlist approach. IRIS.TV uses artificial intelligence and machine learning at a granular level to build individual user profiles, which it then uses to recommend specific videos. For THR-Billboard, the proof is already in: currently 33% of viewers watch 2.4 videos per session (which accounts for 40% of all views) and 10% of viewers watch 3.8 videos per session (which accounts for 24% of all views).

John and Michael explained that the company invests significant resources both in creating original video and attracting audiences to its site. A key goal has been converting readers into viewers. Going beyond conversion, engaging viewers for longer and watching more videos is a critical objective. Because the company has such an extensive catalog of videos, surfacing the right video at the right moment for each user is a key challenge.

IRIS.TV is a set of APIs that integrates with most of the leading video players. IRIS.TV ingests the publisher’s video assets, creates a taxonomy and structures and continually optimizes the associated metadata to drive the recommendations. John and Michael also stressed how easy IRIS.TV was to integrate with their players, so they were able get up and running quickly.

IRIS.TV refers to the increases in video engagement as “video yield.” IRIS.TV is trying to help publishers increase video yield in order to make their owned and operated properties more valuable and competitive as major social platforms grow in importance.

THR-Billboard has also begun to use IRIS.TV’s “Campaign Manager” which allows it to insert branded videos into the recommended list of videos. Campaign Manager intelligently inserts these videos in-stream to specific audiences.

There’s also a case study with the THR-Billboard team, which provides further insights.