CASE STUDY

How Refinery29 Increased Views by 10% with JW Player and Recommendations

Business Goals

Refinery29 creates fashion, beauty, and news videos for its audience of millennial women. While these videos had been driving engagement on social media, the brand wanted to direct more viewers to its website. By implementing JW Recommendations, Refinery29 has been able to both maintain viewership and drive traffic to the company’s owned & operated domain.

Refinery29 is also testing a new JW Player feature: Promoted Videos. This allows the company to push a particular piece of content to the top of the recommendations feed. Refinery29 can use this tool to highlight important editorial content and branded videos from advertising partners, driving more engagement and revenue.

Refinery29 logo featuring a stylized "29" inside a circle on the left and the text "RECOMMENDATIONS by REFINERY29" to the right.

"We’re seeing great return. It was really easy to implement and just a quick check of a box."

Sara Livengood | Product Manager | Refinery29

The Solution

The Recommendations engine gives publishers the power to present relevant videos and keep viewers engaged for an extended time. The engine indexes a publisher’s content library and selects the best videos for each viewer based on content traits and what’s trending in the publisher’s network.

Recommendations updates in real time, so content is always fresh. We are continuously improving and adjusting our underlying algorithms to drive the deepest audience engagement possible.

The benefit is not only that that videos suggested to your viewers are more engaging, but also that they require much less effort than a human-curated playlist.

The Result

10 % Lift in Video Views

After a year-and-a-half of success with JW Player, Refinery29 turned on Recommendations and started testing the Promoted feature. In just a few months, Refinery29 saw:

  • A 10 percent lift in video views
  • Increased engagement on its branded content videos

Refinery29 also uses the analytics from Recommendations to make more informed decisions about which videos to share with its target audience.

Ready to see JW Player in action?