Angus Robertson

On May 9 & 10, the SIIA Content Division hosted Content VIA Platforms – a conference dedicated to educating media, publishing and information professionals about the technology and business issues related to distributing content via mobile, social and other platforms. Guest blogger, Angus Robertson, gives his write up on the session Syndicating Your Content and Working with B2B Aggregation Platforms.

Johnston says his papers syndicate broad interest stories, but keep hyperlocal news within their own system, believing that local news is not of much interest outside the community. (But what about those who have left the community who may still be interested in home town news?) Despite the challenges facing the industry, Johnston thinks it is an exciting time to be in the newspaper business: “We have strong digital assets and we’ll be prepared for future delivery.”

Anthony Capon, Vice President for Content at Dow Jones oversees Factiva, which has  more than 36,000 content providers. Capon noted that anyone can aggregate and webcrawl: “We make it legal and present people with something they haven’t seen before.” Curation becomes more important as the playing field levels, with data mining and visualization emerging as key differentiators: “People want to discover things they don’t know, rather than just searching,” he said. While it is more complicated and expensive to syndicate through multiple platforms, “We have to be on all platforms our users use or we don’t get paid.”

Jeffrey Massa, President and CEO of syndicator YellowBrix, wants to make sure the content gets to the customer and that each of the 3,000 publishers gets credit. Massa noted a trend recently for publishers, especially newspapers, to try to pull back content that they previously syndicated through aggregators.  Agreeing with Capon, Massa noted that syndicators have to add more value: “deduping content is not enough.’  Over time he expects to be syndicating less licensed content and more unlicensed content.  YellowBrix is putting its money where its mouth is through its new iSyndicate product. Rather than the traditional usage-based model, iSyndicate buys in bulk: for example, 10 million page views for a set fee. Clients are charged a flat monthly fee regardless of the amount of usage.

NewsCred CEO Shafqat Islam, emphasized the importance of paying attention to packaging and making sure the display of content is optimized for different platforms, including billboards.  He said NewsCred aims for an “immersive content experiences” using a combination of algorithms and an editorial team. NewsCred was able to sign up the Financial Times, which is known for keeping fairly tight control of its content, by “showing how we can take them beyond where they are. It has to be more than just revenue in some cases.”  As an example of how curation of syndicated content can serve niche markets, NewsCred also has worked with the Daily News to create an online section aimed at the South Asian community in New York.

Many publishers still expect higher fees for content appearing on display screens, such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters terminals, but NewsCred charges clients the same amount, regardless of the platform they receive it on. Noting that “Advertisers want to control the relationship with the customer,” Islam said brands such as Pepsi are the fastest growing customer segment of NewsCred’s business.

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Post written by Angus Robertson, Principal Robertson Advisors llc.

For 10 years Robertson Advisors has been providing content creators and distributors with strategic and tactical consulting services. Angus can be reached at angusrob@mac.com.