The way media is consumed today is forcing legacy media to make uncomfortable adjustments. The aforementioned portability of media is a given. Radio must be portable, which today means being everywhere and being seen & heard everywhere, and creating content for multiple delivery platforms.
Content creation should not only be thought of in regard to where people consume radio (audio) today, but also how they use the same content differently across many locations.
Our three-part series continues with Lindsay Stewart, Co-Founder and CEO at crowd-sourced video marketplace Stringr and AI-powered content reformatting tool Genna, which are two businesses magnifying multiple touchpoints for content. Her businesses enable media companies to repurpose existing IP across multiple platforms, improve monetization, and increase relevancy without proportionally increasing cost.
I describe Stringr to people as “Getty for video” in that thousands of publishers work with Stringr for distribution across video platforms, including television. Genna is software that transforms written articles, RSS feeds, and data into broadcast-ready video and audio. It enables content for use on various platforms.
Stewart, a onetime television journalist and producer who has worked at ABC, Fox, and Bloomberg, launched Stringr in 2014. The evolution of her business fits with the evolution of media consumption. “Multi-platform distribution is essential: Broadcasters are siloed in one format; technology must bridge content to social, digital, OOH, and third-party platforms without heavy manual effort,” she shared. According to Stewart, the format must fit the platform. “Forcing legacy content into new platforms without reformatting creates inauthentic experiences that alienate modern audiences.”
She acknowledges that the importance of video goes beyond the normal origination as being from television. We’re seeing more and more radio stations placing cameras in their studios. Podcasts with video are garnering great attention. Video unlocks monetization: Inline video monetizes better than static ads; audio-only content cannot compete in digital out-of-home, YouTube, or video-first platforms. Adding the sense of sight to sound is an advantage and is an option a user (listener) may choose to enhance their entertainment or information experience.
Lindsay encourages content creators to think bigger. “Make content for everything, then learn: Rather than pre-selecting formats, create video/audio for 80% of daily output, test across platforms, and optimize based on performance data.” She adds that this is a place where AI can be helpful as, in her words, “AI handles reformatting so humans focus on creation.”
Lindsay’s framing: “Nobody wanted to reformat content when they grew up. AI removes that burden and returns journalists and talent to content gathering & creation.”
Similarly, the products from her Genna platform provide advantages enabling, as I like to say, the use of every part of the cow. Genna converts audio files or articles into video/audio quickly using owned IP and licensed imagery. They can create varied segment lengths and aspect ratios for multi-platform promotion. Of real interest is that Genna supports language expansion into tertiary markets (beyond English/Spanish) with their own advertising ecosystems.
Lindsay shared, “I think that clear across the board, no matter what kind of media you are, whether audio only, broadcast television, even publishers. Everybody’s good at one thing. They may be good at audio. They’re good at TV and all forms of video. They’re good at writing an article and publishing it. But really, what we need to see from all of these players is the taking of the data that they have so carefully collected and curated, and making sure that it flows into these other formats, so that they can reach many audiences. That means any particular broadcast, whether it be Audio or Video.”
What does it mean to get to other places more easily? “That’s a number of things. Other places mean other platforms. They are social media. Podcasting. Streaming. They are other formats. And so any technology that can bridge that gap and take primary data, that primary thing that they’re really, really good at and allow them to reach other places and really repackage it easily and without a lot of effort. That’s kind of core. Why is that core? Because you’re reaching the audience. And of course, reaching an audience means you have more opportunity for monetization.”
Generating revenue is why so many legacy broadcasters have focused on multiplatform distribution and are turning to digital to buoy their revenue stream. However, far too many are only dipping their toe in this new technology pool and then mistakenly consider themselves as being seriously involved. “You see a lot of various media companies have made themselves very siloed in one format and then they say, ‘There’s no more revenue to be had here.’ I would argue there’s plenty of revenue to be had, but you really have to expand your reach and be smart about it and be able to repackage it more quickly.”
That’s where Genna comes in: they can take any structured data, whether it be an audio file or an article, and help their affiliates create video or audio really quickly with their information, their intellectual property, and then match it with the imagery and the content that they have entitlements to. And the situation goes from not having any video at all to having thousands of videos a month, again using your own IP and making it flow. That should lead to monetization. The more content types you can connect an advertiser to, the more opportunities to increase their ad buy. “Do you want fries with that?” is one of the oldest upsell concepts ever.
Stewart shared that her partners who are doing the best with monetization focus on three things:
- Take a number of bets, get your content in all the places it can go where it possibly could make money.
- Realize that when you have differentiated content, get it “out there.” Realize that when there’s not a lot of noise in your space, take advantage of the situation. If you’re covering certain content vertically really, really well, you know, that. Act on it with multiple points of distribution.
- Speed. This is where technology and companies like Stringr and Genna provide an advantage.
In Stewart’s words, “It’s one thing to have breaking news and get a video up in eight hours. It’s another thing to have breaking news and get a video up in eight minutes.”
If you aren’t capturing the audience at the appropriate time, you may lose out on that big opportunity to make revenue. Lindsay believes that the best revenue teams that they’re seeing aren’t just deciding on one thing. They’re deciding on a lot of things, and they’re taking in the data, examining it, and then they’re learning what wins. Another way of learning what wins is making content for almost everything that you possibly can, and seeing what surprises you.
To that point, she shared that in the early relationships that her company has, a lot of talent, producers, and content creators wondered what they should make videos about.
Her advice was “Don’t think about what you should make videos about. Make videos of everything that you possibly can. Not everything fits a video, not everything fits audio, but a lot of it does. Maybe 80% of what you’re creating every single day. Make hard choices like you used to when creating video or audio was more expensive. Experiment.”
Regarding metrics leading to sales: “I don’t think that any of the metrics that anybody is really using right now for the sale of media are super great. I think what digital does gives a specter of engagement and a specter of data.” Stewart, an acknowledged critic of all of the current data used for sales, also believes that a lot of advertisers who are used to buying what they’ve always purchased and in the way they’ve always purchased media, say “the hell with more granular data.” To that end, educating targeted advertisers is on us as those who are connected to generating revenue.
While Audio may be our primary focus in radio, many of us are looking for ways to renew our content in a manner that reignites (or possibly ignites) interest in radio. Video is one of those platforms. Video added to radio content, video podcasting, video on apps and websites, is important. Ms. Stewart wrapped our conversation by stating, “I think a lot of audio teams have gotten into video by smartly putting a camera on their on-air talent, and saying, okay, now we have video, now we have something we can put on YouTube. I would posit that with products like ours, or others on the horizon, as broadcasters can do that. They can also make content a much more engaging experience when it goes along with whatever people are talking about, and is visualized, for that specific platform.”
The tools exist for media companies to greatly expand both their content and advertiser platforms, create programming that’s close to being instantaneous in a way that maximizes digital while competing for revenue, and to be available when and where the audience is available. It starts with asking yourself if you’re serious about being multiplatform, or if what you’re doing is designed to make you feel like you’re “doing” something in digital.
Those of us with careers and business based in legacy media have to be able to look beyond quarterly reporting, doing things as they’ve always been done, and return to a focus on audience growth that leads to revenue. That is, if we’re going to change a trajectory and return to growth as a medium. That starts with being heard and seen everywhere.
Next Week: Being More Than Radio; Part 3 – Podcasting.
