We’re excited to announce our partnership with Wochit — a video creation platform for newsrooms, media companies, and brands looking to expand audience engagement through social video. Together, we support publishers by improving their ability to quickly and easily produce compelling content as well as their need to serve, manage, and measure the performance of video across platforms and devices.

We checked in with Chen Barnea, the Director of Marketing at Wochit about the integration, how their team helps publishers succeed with video, and why it’s so important for publishers to harness the power of video.

1. Kicking things off, tell us about the new integration between TwentyThree and Wochit?

Wochit and TwentyThree integration is an opportunity for companies to get an end-to-end video solution - from creation to distribution and analytics. We’re thrilled to kick-off this partnership and enable brands to create social videos at speed and scale.

2. For some additional insight, tell us about Wochit and how you help your publishers succeed with video?

Wochit is a video creation tool that’s solving one of the biggest challenge faced by content producers. With the increase in demand for video content across digital channels, content producers need the ability to quickly develop timely content at scale and for distribution across platforms in order to attract and engage with audiences.

With Wochit, videos can be created quickly, using a built-in library of rights-cleared assets from AP, Reuters, Getty, Bloomberg, and others, as well as from social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The easy, yet powerful video editor enables any storyteller to create on-brand, professional videos that are optimized for the different digital and social platforms.

That’s why over 500 media brands worldwide create videos with Wochit, including Gannett, Time Inc., CBS, The Week, Der Spiegel, ProSieben, The Huffington Post, Singapore Straits Times, and La Repubblica.

3. We’re super excited about our new integration with Wochit here at TwentyThree, from your perspective, why is it so important for publishers to harness the power of video?

It’s no secret that video is now the content format of choice across platforms. All trends point towards increasing interest video. The main social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, put video content at the heart of all their strategies this past year. Advertisers are looking for more placements of their video ads, which in turn creates a need for publishers to increase their video inventory and develop video creation as part of their organization’s core capabilities.

Moreover, because of the audience appetite for mobile, social video is larger than ever. Video, and specifically social video, has become essential to any brand looking to build an engaged audience around its content.

4. In your experience, how has video changed the way publishers connect with their readers/audience?

Video has its own set of rules that publishers learn to adapt in order to stand-out in the crowded feeds. Research has shown that the most popular social videos are those that connect with viewers on an emotional level — viewers are more likely to watch and share content that resonates with them. Additional factors that affect the popularity of videos are the optimization of video to the different social platforms and fast reaction to current events.

5. What is it about video that allows publishers to tell stories so powerfully and quickly?

Video is a visual medium, one that when mastered can elicit a strong emotional reaction from viewers. In less than 30 seconds, a video can inspire, entertain, provoke and call to action - more quickly and with more power than any text or image.

6. 50% of all website data is now from video content (and growing more and more each year), what do you think is the future of video for most publishers?

In the State of Social Video 2017, we surveyed publishers and brands about their plans for video in the coming year. 88% of them expect their organization to increase investment in video in 2018. While monetization is an on-going issue for publishers, 51% maintained that audience growth is the primary goal of their video strategy. With 66% of surveyed organizations already producing their videos in-house, we expect this trend to persist - turning video creation into a core capability for publishers and marketers (similar to writing today).