A regional publisher has signed an exclusive deal with a company which offers personalised content recommendations for websites.
Johnston Press has teamed up with New York-based company Taboola, which will provide ‘content you may like’-style web widgets for its newspapers’ sites across the UK.
The widget allows readers to see links to related articles on the same site, other JP sites and external sites.
According to an announcement by the publisher, the partnership enables JP to drive high-quality traffic to its sister sites while also engaging visitors with sponsored content from around the web, creating a new revenue stream.
Jeff Moriarty, pictured above left, JP’s chief digital and product officer, said: “Johnston Press is heavily invested in delivering the most informative and interesting content to our users, and our partnership with Taboola allows us to build on this engagement even further.
“As mobile traffic becomes increasingly important for us, and we develop highly localised native advertising solutions for customers, Taboola’s best-of-breed content recommendations are proving to be a valuable multi-platform solution.”
As a result of the new multi-year deal, Taboola’s recommendations will now appear across more than 200 Johnston Press websites.
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Oh god no…
Thus making the sites even worse than they already are with prominent links to clickbait rubbish and ‘not actually related at all’ rubbish.
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Wibble
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“Best-of-breed content recommendations are proving to be a valuable multi-platform solution.” Words fail me, as they have Mr Moriarty.
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Oh dear! I’ve just accessed two stories on the YP website which have Taboola sponsored links, not one of which relates to either story in any way. It’s just clickbait as far as I can see.
It’s the end of the summer in the UK so why a story about getting bikini fit is one of the links I really don’t know. One of the stories was about children/families so an ideal opportunity to include all sorts of info from cheap schoolwear to dealing with school problems. Missed opportunity, let’s hope this wasn’t an expensive investment by JP.
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You’re all missing the point. It might be clickbait crap, but it’s a ‘revenue stream’.
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Sorry Wozzil, but you’re missing the bigger picture. This might be ‘a revenue stream’, but it’s completely unrelated to local newspapers and some of the links are to rather unscrupulous websites, potentially scams etc. You might as well start an online gambling site or add some porn. Hey, it would be a revenue stream. Right?
This is just another example of grabbing any old national revenue because the big regionals cannot be bothered to work with local businesses in digital in the same as their newspapers have done in the past.
Roll on content blocking in iOS9 or 9.1. At least that might finish off this Taboola and Outbrain rubbish on almost 50 per cent of mobile devices!
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JP must reckon its readers/viewers are idiots.
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I do love a set of “highly localised native advertising solutions”. Nothing pickles my cabbage quite like them. Shame our Jeff couldn’t find it within himself to laud this as “exciting”, however.
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“As mobile traffic becomes increasingly important for us, and we develop highly localised native advertising solutions for customers, Taboola’s best-of-breed content recommendations are proving to be a valuable multi-platform solution.”
What total babble.
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‘Don’t hit me with the negative waves’.
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“Best-of-breed content recommendations are proving to be a valuable multi-platform solution”
And the crisp mood music plays!! Sounds like Ashley speak!!!
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I’ve read that twice. I don’t understand a word of it. But I understand newspapers and sales figures. JP won’t have any newspapers left in two years or so to cross platform widget with their digitisers and best of breed content billshut.
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The other posters are correct – this kind of thing is just click bait. People are not stupid. They just bypass this kind of rubbish. They are visiting a local news website because they want local news. Treating our readers like this just undermines our brand.
Here’s an idea: why don’t we spend some money investing in quality reporters to produce some quality journalism. We might win back some actual readers rather than people who ‘won’t believe what happened next…’
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Grim Fairy Tales…
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JP Content Gatherer – people do click on them, just as they click on the ‘when I read X, my heart skipped a beat’ or ‘when I saw number 9 I immediately had an orgasm so powerful you could hear it halfway down to Australia’.
You have to admire the people who devise the clickbait link headlines because they pique human curiosity to find out exactly what ‘X’ is, even though 999 times out of 1,000 it’s a massive time waster and can even be a rabbit hole you fall down and come out an hour later, having discovered which celebrities have cellulite, which tattoo fails you’d most like to emulate and which freaky photos freaked you out the most.
It’s also a crying shame that local newspapers that once chronicled the ins and outs of Mrs Jones’ practical demonstration at the WI meeting coupled with the first day at school for Horrid Henries are now reduced to claiming clickbait is the answer to all their digital revenue woes.
It ain’t. It’s a crying shame.
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This morning the JP share price is down to 95.5p so Jeff’s rabbit out of the hat is wowing the stock market…NOT!
I’ve checked the YP website and there is nothing related to the story on a drugs court case whatsoever, just links about top 10 cars to buy, upgrading to Sky sports and gossip about Hillary Clinton.
Imagine you’re a gent of the shires and your favourite read dishes you up this drivel. Ashley and crew have lost the plot big time.
JP are relentlessly going after clickbait. What a wasted opportunity to add something of real value to their websites. Is this the best Ashley’s team can come up with? Woeful.
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Widgets and multi platform solutions! Good Lord. If the average journo don’t understand then I’m damn sure that bloke on the Clapham omnibus ain’t going to either.
Mustn’t grumble!
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Meanwhile, in other news, deckchairs are still being rearranged on board the (not too) good ship JP.
How long before share dealings in this outfit are suspended?
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JP share price is below 2p in its old money. Doesn’t this worry someone?
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“drive high-quality traffic “. motoring pages?
Why do people like Jeff have to spout such anal rubbish. Use plain speaking English. No-one is fooled or impressed by this rubbish, least of all the greedy devils in the City.
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Someone please call for Sherlock Holmes, he might be able to understand what Moriarty is going on about.
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When will Highfield finally wake up and smell the coffee?! As far as digital is concerned as a revenue stream IT DOSENT WORK,
This is just Ashley using a new whip to flog the same old dead digital horse !!
Mean while circulation and share prices go thru the floor and once proud publications are neglected and head past the point of no return!
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The saddest part of this story is that companies like JP have learned nothing from the last disatrous 30 years for the regional press.
Rather than treasure and tempt their customer base, they have continued to see them as nothing more nor less than a convenient cash cow to be called upon when profits are flagging.
They are even doing it today with their print products. Despite an appalling drop in editorial standards and a complete disregard in the main for their potential economic contributions to the communities they claim to serve, regional media companies continue to raise their cover prices at rates far in excess of the products’ worth.
Now they are moving their shabby practices to the web by imagining that their audience will not be fooled by this clickbait to nowhere scheme.
I am pretty certain that the content revealed by this scheme will NOT feature the likes of:
“Ten things that happened at the council meeting last month.”
Kim Kardashian’s derriere it won’t.
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Mr Angry, digital does work and can work much better, however, applying a national strategy to a local business doesn’t.
Nationally, it’s all about getting vast numbers to showcase large brands. That’s where the big money is and that’s fine as part of a wider strategy.
Locally, you need to help local businesses get the right people through their doors to prove your value to them. That’s what local newspapers have succeeded in doing in the past and, if you can still do that, advertisers will pay for it regardless of the medium and regardless of the unique users, time spent on site, pages per visit etc.
The boundaries of newspapers, which were once determined by wherever they had the budget to send their delivery vans, has now been set free by digital and there is probably a much bigger place for regional and national adverts.
However, there are still boundaries around certain social groups, interests, services etc and focusing on these at a local level could prove extremely valuable. Trying to grab extra readers from an area which will never travel that far to buy something from your once bread-and-butter advertisers cannot be a good local strategy.
This sort of rubbish from Taboola only serves to keep shareholders happy in the short-term but at the expense of local news and credibility in the long-term. Continue to erode the historic trust of local newspapers much further and there’s no way back in print or online.
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More junk to clutter up the website, make the LOCAL news harder to read, put inappropriate content next to sensitive stories and draw the ire of social media critics.
They put this rubbish on but won’t create similar links to major stories on the websites of neighbouring JP papers.. Oh, silly me — they wouldn’t get paid for adding more local content, would they?
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