Media Tech Roundup

Vertical video is coming to the web. Publishers like TIME and The Arena Group are working with a tech company called Webflix to bring more mobile-friendly video to their sites.  In addition, Outbrain, the recommendation engine that promotes articles at the bottom of so many high-traffic media sites, launched a new Moments feature to bring the video format to the bottom of article pages. The pitch for vertical video is clear: it’s a more popular and immersive format for mobile web readers, plus publishers (and advertisers) can reuse content previously created for TikTok or YouTube Shorts. 

Meta has released a GenAI video tool for advertisers. The new Video Expansion feature lets you “expand” your videos by appending new, generated footage to the end. This move mirrors the earlier GenAI tool, Image Expansion. Meta reports that campaigns using its GenAI ad features have 11% higher click-through rate and 7.6% higher conversion rate. 

How to Disaster-Proof Your Site Migration

Welcome back to our series on preparing a publisher website for a successful content migration. In Part 1, we explored critical questions to help determine if a migration is right for your business. Now that you've (theoretically) decided to take the plunge, it's time to prepare. Welcome to Part 2: Taking Your Website's "Before" Snapshot.

Part 2: Taking Your Website's ‘Before’ Snapshot

A stable site migration requires ample work before a single image is moved. It’s vital to gather data to get a comprehensive “before” picture. Getting “before” data ensures it’s possible to properly:

• Benchmark: Provide a point of reference to assess the impact of your migration.

• Set goals: Determine realistic targets for improvement.

• Mitigate risk: Identify potential problem areas that need attention before the migration.

This helps ensure you’ll know exactly where the migration has impacted key metrics, and will make clear where product leaders should focus technical efforts in the crucial 30-day period after the relaunch.

For example, without noting performance data for your website on its current CMS, after migration you won’t know if page load speed has tanked, so you won’t know how crucial it is to make simple technical changes like lazy loading elements or removing redirect loops.

How do you go about gathering data and what metrics should you measure? Discover the answers below:

Meet our Partner: Pagely  🚀

We’ve partnered with the world’s No. 1 managed WordPress hosting platform to bring clients even better solutions. 

Pagely was the first managed platform for hosting WordPress sites. Back in 2006 they introduced the premise of Managed WordPress Hosting. Their forward-thinking and innovation have made WordPress much better. 

Learn more about Pagely here. 

Refact is a Proud Presenting Sponsor at AMO Summit |  Oct. 15 in NYC

We’re excited to be a Presenting Sponsor at this year’s AMO Summit in NYC. 🎉 

The summit, organized by A Media Operator (AMO), is a must-attend event for media founders and executives. This year’s lineup features speakers from Axios and The Atlantic. Discussion topics include sustainable business models and media mergers and acquisitions.

Refact CEO Saeed Abbaspour and Flexpress CEO Ajay Rayasam will talk about how technical infrastructure can unlock greater value during M&A. They’ll share insights into how improving infrastructure makes media assets more efficient, scalable, and valuable. Learn more about this event here.

A massive shout out to Jacob Donnelly, founder of AMO, for this triumphant gathering of industry pros. 

You can still book your ticket here. If you're attending, let’s connect!