Vertical video is the next big news format—is your newsroom ready?

Vertical video is moving from social platforms into the heart of news products.

Over the past year, publishers like The New York Times, The Economist, and CNN have introduced vertical-video feeds across their homepages and apps. These new “Watch” tabs signal a clear shift: social-style video is becoming a core output for modern newsrooms.

The opportunity

Social platforms like Instagram and TikTok have made short-form vertical video a daily habit for millions. 73% of U.S. consumers watch short-form video multiple times per day, according to Media.net. And 90% of consumers are open to seeing these formats on publisher sites.

This presents a clear opportunity for newsrooms to bring a popular format into their own ecosystems, where engagement can be owned and monetized.

INMA’s Advertising Initiative Lead, Gabriel Dorosz, says short-form vertical video is “the biggest ad opportunity for news.” Advertisers are expected to redirect US$146 billion from display advertising into short-form video advertising by 2028.

Publishers are also using vertical video to drive subscription revenue. 

The Economist’s paid subscribers have doubled their vertical video consumption over the past year, according to Nieman Lab, helping the publisher to tackle the “unread guilt factor” that so often drives subscription cancellations.

The challenge

To deliver a TikTok-style experience inside your news app, you need a constant supply of timely vertical video.

Traditional production workflows simply can’t keep pace.

Each clip demands scripting, recording, editing, approvals, and coordination—an intensive chain of tasks that makes high-volume output hard to sustain. And by the time a video is ready, the story’s moment may have already passed.

Costs add up quickly, too. Relying on traditional video production makes it tough to generate a return on investment.

Newsrooms need a fast, scalable way to turn articles into vertical video.

That’s where BeyondWords comes in.

The solution

BeyondWords automatically converts your articles into vertical videos and delivers them directly into your websites, apps, and feeds. So you can publish videos as quickly and consistently as you publish stories.

It’s the simple, commercially smart way to satisfy modern media habits.

Videos can be fully customized to fit your brand and audience. You can:

• turn full articles into video or generate video-specific scripts using AI;
• choose an ElevenLabs or Azure voice, or clone your own voices for narration;
• auto-insert relevant images and videos from Getty or your own DAM system; and
• customize the visual style of your videos, including captions and branding.

Here are some examples of what BeyondWords’ video generator can do:

Our platform can also generate horizontal videos and audio versions from the same article, allowing you to repurpose stories across multiple formats and channels without additional work.

Just integrate, configure, then let BeyondWords do the rest. 

Want to know more? Book a demo with our team.