GigaOM » Digital Content

Sector RoadMap: Content personalization in 2013

Mark Mulligan — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:54:59 +0000

Content owners, whether they are publishers, retailers, or marketers, are always looking for new ways to deliver a unique experience to their customers. We call this content personalization. Key trends in this area are led by a collection of technologies that we call post-programming curation. These technologies use the best of behavioral tracking, collaborative filtering, audience targeting, and dynamic content presentation.

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Podcast: Why the digital age needs an effective content licensing strategy

Jenn Marston — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:30:56 +0000

Historically publishers have lacked focus on licensing and syndicating digital content. The latest GigaOM Research podcast features Connected Consumer curator Paul Sweeting, who discusses how social media could play a role in improving digital content licensing, key tools in this space, and the impact on publishers and journalists.

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SHOW NOTES
Host: Adam Lesser
Speaker: Paul Sweeting

Why content licensing hasn’t historically played a bigger role
Could social media nurture a business model around licensing
Key tools/startups in the licensing/syndication space
The legal context
What needs to happen going forward to create a syndication business
Impact on publishers and journalists

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Content monetization: News licensing and syndication still need marketplaces and infrastructure

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 06:55:25 +0000

Publishers’ lack of strategic focus on licensing and syndication today is matched by nearly equal indifference from software developers, entrepreneurs, and investors. Millions of investment dollars and countless development hours have gone into creating online advertising tools, readership analytics, and aggregation engines. But comparatively little has gone into developing the sort of tools, APIs, metrics, or exchanges that might have aided the emergence of a content licensing and paid syndication business online.

Key highlights in this report include:

For publishers, the first step to monetizing something is to be able to measure it. The analytics tools now available make it possible to track the spread of content on social platforms closely.

Until now there has not been a marketplace where those potential buyers and sellers of content could meet. Nor were there adequate tools to enable verifiable transactions between them. Tools like Cascade and Ricochet are helping put the foundations of such a market in place.

Both publishers and licensees will need to seize the sort of ad hoc syndication opportunities that arise online and on social media networks. One of the major tasks facing publishers over the next three to five years will be to structure their repositories of content so they can be searched, sorted, customized, repackaged, and accessed in real time via standardized APIs.

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Can publishing giant Wiley take on lynda.com and others with new digital learning site?

Ki Mae Heussner — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:49:29 +0000

If you want to learn how to create an infographic, build your own website, make heads or tails out of an Excel spreadsheet or accomplish any other software-related goal, you can head to lynda.com, Udemy, creativeLIVE, Codecademy or any of a growing list of online learning sites. But publishing giant Wiley believes there’s still room for competition and on Tuesday took the wraps off of its own Digital Classroom.

Launched in partnership with the American Graphics Institute, the new site provides a marketplace of video tutorials and digital books for learning about creative software, web design and development and office applications. Video tutorials range from newbie-level instructions on how to play music and video on your iPhone to more advanced lessons on using CSS with Dreamweaver.

Like competitors in the space, Digital Classroom targets individuals looking for professional advancement, as well as personal enrichment, and it is looking to snare enterprise clients. Wiley’s move into this space underscores the opportunity companies see in helping individuals and corporations acquire new skills needed to compete in a rapidly changing economy.

Even though other companies already provide software training courses online, Barry Pruett, vice president and executive publisher for Wiley Professional Development, said his company believes it can compete on price ($20 a month or $10 a month with an annual subscription, compared to lynda.com’s starting price of $25 a month) and customization. Enterprise clients can create their own sites that include the content most appropriate for their employees (potentially including content beyond software training). And college professors can create private groups for their classes, integrate Wiley content with other course content on their university site and track student progress, he said.

Even though the site offers competitive pricing and flexible content integration options, the initial content itself didn’t seem as engaging to me as what Udemy, creativeLIVE and lynda.com offer. From a quick tour of the site, it seemed as though most of the video content included screenshots of the software and audio narration. Much of the content on Udemy and lynda.com, however, puts an expert instructor front and center and alternates video of the software with video of a person talking and other shots for a more interesting experience. But Pruett said future videos could offer more engaging formats and he emphasized that this is just the first version of the site.

Wiley has a 200-year history and other verticals beyond software training that it could add to Digital Classroom but, for now, its library of 46 courses, 50 digital books and 3,000 videos is dwarfed by lynda.com’s nearly 1.700 courses.

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Digital learning startup Benchprep expands into video-based software training courses

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:00:17 +0000

When Benchprep launched two years ago (and rebranded from its initial launch as Watermelon Express), it focused only on interactive test prep content. But over time, it spotted an opportunity in providing content for the classes students take before and after the SAT, ACT and other standardized tests. On Monday, the startup is taking a step beyond those basic curriculum classes (algebra, chemistry, etc.) with software training courses delivered via video.

In addition to the 40 courses on Excel, Adobe and other software tools, the Chicago-based company has rolled out video courses for about 20 other subjects, including college-level math and chemistry.

The expansion, said Benchprep co-founder Ashish Rangnekar, furthers the startup’s plan to be a one-stop shop for digital learning content for college students.

“We asked what can we offer them that goes along with their educational life cycle? One of the big things that emerged was software training,” he said.

He also added that while the company had previously included video in parts of other offerings, expanding into entirely video-based courses is another way they can keep students engaged on mobile, a platform on which they’re already extra active.

While Rangnekar acknowledged that subject matter content on Benchprep may overlap with content found on Khan Academy and skill-focused content may be similar to that on Udemy or lynda.com, he emphasized that unlike those sites Benchprep is a distributor, not producer of content. For the new software courses, for example, the startup partnered with CompuWorks and the NROC (National Repository of Online Courses). Other content partners include Pearson and O’Reilly. He also said that while other online learning sites offer classes on software like Excel and Adobe, Benchprep’s courses specifically target college students using those tools for classes, not adults hoping for professional advancement.

Students may be able to access some content from other online learning sites for free or a lower one-off charge. But Benchprep believes its value is as a central location for students to not only access courses that fill a variety of needs but get help evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, as well as recommendations on the courses that will help them progress.

To drive home that “education-as-a-service” proposition, the company last fall adopted a subscription model in which students pay $30 a month.

To date, the company has raised $6 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates and says it has 410,000 registered users, 60,000 paying customers and offers more than 200 courses.

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Press+: Publishers are charging more for digital content and offering less free

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:05:19 +0000

RR Donnelley’s Press+, which helps more than 400 publishers offer metered paywalls and manage digital subscriptions, says its clients are charging more for monthly subscriptions while offering fewer articles for free.

“What we’re seeing is a tide sweeping through the industry of publishers lowering their meters and moving to prices that reflect the true value of their content,” Press+ cofounder Gordon Crovitz said in a statement.

Data from the company’s publishers shows that the average price of a monthly subscription was $9.26 in January 2013 — up five percent from July 2012 and 40 percent from July 2011:

In addition, Press+ says its clients are lowering their meters. On average, they offer 10 free articles per month, down from 11 last September and 13 at the beginning of 2012.

It’s worth noting that Press+ works with a lot of large newspaper companies. Pricing is likely to vary at smaller organizations and on blogs like Andrew Sullivan’s Dish (which runs its metered paywall through TinyPass), but it will be interesting to watch whether the trend of upward pricing and fewer free articles occurs across sites.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Voronin76

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How to compete with Facebook in 2013

Mark Mulligan — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:47:31 +0000

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How consumer media will change in 2013

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 07:55:50 +0000

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Pearson exec: we need to be an “Electronic Arts for education”

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:16:40 +0000

What does publishing giant Pearson have in common with the giants of the video game industry? Not enough, apparently.

In a conversation at the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum, Luyen Chou, chief product officer for Pearson’s K-12 technology group, said that as new technology upends the textbook publishing industry, his company needs to become an “Electronic Arts for education.”

Clearly, Pearson and its rivals in education publishing need to reimagine their role as the rise of digital content cripples their business model. But look to Electronic Arts as a model?

Speaking with me later, Chou said that to keep up with the changing environment, traditional publishers can’t just digitize the static textbooks of the past, they need to excel at producing high-quality, interactive digital learning experiences and get them into the hands of students.

“[That includes] digital studios, animators, illustrators, producers, 3-D artists – we need to build that capacity within instructional companies like Pearson and we need the whole end-to-end supply chain to the take that from the studio to the actual users,” he said. “The folks that have done that well are the EAs of the world, digital studios. That’s not a core competency for companies like Pearson.”

Given the company’s wide reach across different corners of the market, from content to testing, at the K-12 and college levels and beyond, one of Pearson’s key assets is the massive amount of data it can use to target and personalize learning for students. And Chou acknowledged that the Electronic Arts parallel wasn’t meant to imply that Pearson only needs to focus on creating high-quality content, and not on other parts of its business.

“I take it for granted that we’re going to have a huge strategic advantage by way of the data we have on our customers, our students,” he said. “But you still have to serve up those compelling experiences. You can have the best data and the best algorithms in the world, but if what it ends up serving up is digitized versions of 2-D static content, it’s not going to sell either. We have to make sure that we’re complementing our data and platform with high-quality interactive learning content.” In getting to that goal, he said, it’s an open question whether the company will build or buy.

Interestingly, the SIIA ed tech conference itself took place at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center in New York and several speakers commented on yesterday’s news that the publishing giant had sold off its education division to private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

But while McGraw-Hill chose to divest itself of its education arm, Pearson has taken the opposite approach, arming itself with even more education companies in recent years.

In the last twelve months alone, the company has spent $1.6 billion on acquisitions, according to Baran Rosen, president of media investment bank Whitestone Communications. And, given reports that Pearson is exploring the sale of the Financial Times, its push in education will likely only continue.

“They are going to really be a pure-play education company,” Rosen said at the SIIA conference. “That’s where they’re staking their future and they’re doing it in a big way.”

Image by Cindy Minear via Shutterstock.

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Paywall startup Tinypass adds metered subscriptions for small publishers

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:00:53 +0000

New York-based startup Tinypass, which helps small publishers and content creators charge for content online through existing platforms like Google, is rolling out metered content options to all of its clients.

Tinypass, which signed up its first four publishers in December 2011 and says it now works with over 250 publishers (through a revenue share — see below), had tested the metering option with the news site Chicago Phoenix and is now making it available to everyone. The metering function is built into Tinypass’s WordPress and Drupal plugins and its APIs, and publishers can choose to meter by number of articles retrieved or by time frame (say, unlimited content for 24 hours).

Publishers who want to add a meter can choose from two options: client-side, which works by adding a cookie to a user’s browser, or server-side, which a user can’t circumvent by clearing cookies. Publishers can also choose whether they want to include links from social networks in a metered article limit, or whether they want those to be free views.

Tinypass makes money through a revenue share with publishers — taking a cut that ranges from 2 percent to 10 percent depending on volume. (The publisher’s share increases as volume increases.) That’s one way the company differentiates itself from Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz’s Press+ (now owned by RR Donnelley), which charges publishers a setup fee. Also, Tinypass COO David Restrepo told me, Press+ is “very focused on newspapers and on bundling the physical paper with digital editions,” while Tinypass is “digital-native, digital-first and focused on media” like MP3s and PDFs, not just newspapers.

Tinypass was founded in January 2011 as part of Hudson Media Ventures and has raised ~~$500,000~~ $1,000,000 in angel funding.

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