Though it’s the biggest force in media right now, video has traditionally been a bit of a black box. It wasn’t always easy to access data about things like the video’s content, where it plays, whom it’s reaching, and how it monetizes. All that is changing thanks to video intelligence. As our Cofounder/CIO Jeroen Wijering showed at this year’s JW Insights, data innovations can unravel what we can know about video, simplify workflows, and deepen engagement—among many other benefits.

On Wednesday, June 6, 2018, JW Player proudly held our fifth annual JW Insights conference at NYC event venue Apella. We invited a who’s who lineup of digital video industry experts and leaders to share their wisdom about harnessing the power of data (and other best practices) to engage viewers and boost revenues.

More than 300 premium publishers, broadcasters, partners, and influencers joined us for enriching discussions on industry hot topics, including video intelligence, machine learning, video player bidding, and content syndication. Here are a few highlights and takeaways from our most successful conference to date.

Over the past few months, we rolled out a five-part blog series on the key metrics of how and why viewers engage. If you followed the posts, you’re awesome. If you haven’t, it’s time to undo the tragedy. Our Video Analytics playbook is a quick and easy way to catch up. Download the guide today and discover how to use data to improve your video strategy.  

In light of increased fragmentation and competition, it is no longer enough to simply present content to audiences and expect increased engagement. Viewers today expect to engage with appealing and slick content presentations that work well across all devices. Publishers that fail in this execution suffer from low view counts, high abandonment rates, and fewer return visits. In the second part of our Recommendations blog post series, we will discuss the visual improvements to Recommendations that enhance user interaction with content.

We’re proud to partner with Float Left to create an end-to-end OTT solution for content publishers and broadcasters around the world. Float Left is a front-end application developer whose apps have helped publishers like Crackle, NBC Sports, and Viacom delive­­r content on OTT (“over-the-top”) devices. This partnership bridges JW Player’s high-quality online video delivery with Float Left’s apps and custom development. Publishers will be able to expand their content distribution, create premium viewing experiences, and focus on their core business.

In telling the story of how and why viewers engage, we’ve now come to the final piece of the puzzle in our series on video fundamentals—“time watched.” Beyond embeds, ad impressions, plays, and completes, the “time watched” metric provides an added layer of nuance by identifying exact points of viewer drop-off and where you can improve your video strategy.

In our series of video fundamentals, we've explored embeds, ad impressions, and plays.  We're now at the end of the video life cycle: the complete. If your viewers have watched to this point, congrats! You’ve not only kept their attention, you’ve also unlocked a key component of the all-important Content Score.

So far in our exploration of video fundamentals, we've examined embeds and plays. But there’s often a step in between that underlies the success of all AVOD (advertising video on-demand) publishers. Ad impressions are the engines that turn plays into profits. Measuring them correctly and using these insights in evaluating audience loyalty are critical if you want to monetize successfully.

Last December, as part of our series on video fundamentals, we looked at the many definitions of a video play and found that “not all plays are created equal.” If you want to tell the full story of why and how viewers engage with content, the quality of a play matters a lot---but it isn’t the only benchmark. That story begins with “the embed.”

As the New Year begins, we’ve put together a snapshot of what JW Player has been up to in the last 12 months. 2017 was a huge year for our company as we sped up our growth, expanded into new markets around the world, developed 36+ new features, and brought video to more screens than ever.

The industry’s moving rapidly—and we’re in the fast lane. Here are highlights from our year in video.