When first I checked out Mochila a couple of years ago they were booting up their business plan around self-service licensing for premium content - largely a storefront approach for licensing individual premium articles and other content that could be used in a Web site. Lots has changed since then with Mochila. While integrating individual items of content from premium sources is still a key component of their solution today the Mochila platform is far more about delivering streams of premium syndicated content via widgets, with licensing pushed to the background as terms and conditions rather than a marketing theme.

In the time that it took Mochila to hammer out this positioning many services have sprung up to deliver contextual ad and content widgets. From Inform to Sphere to Voxant and even traditional B2B licensors such as Alacra there is a broadening mix of players trying to get valuable content in context. Like some of these plays Mochila also offers contextual ad services that can benefit both the syndicators and the licensors, which gives some flexibility in monetization. Mochila also upped the breadth of content being syndicated, including photos and videos in the mix as well. Now Mochila has announced a slideshow player that makes it easy for sites to embed photo slide shows in their sites - a feature already popular for those wanting mashups of celebrity photo-ops.

The bigger picture, though, is that content syndication is becoming far more self-service for a far wider array of publishers, with tools like Mochila enabling content brands to travel further, wider and in a more integrated fashion more automatically than ever before. Syndication used to be more about going into the back end of content services, but in today's federated content environments content finds itself increasingly aggregated on the front end of publishing platforms, with database integration either bypassed altogether or an afterthought at best. In essence the only database that really seems to matter to many online publishers is the index in search engines trying to help people find their sites - and the rich array of content than can be embedded via services such as Mochila.

Labels: content in context, mochila, syndication, weblogs, widgets

Sometimes it seems as if Apple can't win when it comes to playing the media game. After having been roundly criticized by some for having too much control over pricing via its iPod-compatible DRM content packaging and moving towards a more open model for content access Apple let the NBC television network take a walk when it wanted both higher pricing and tighter DRM controls. Ars Technica reports that NBC has opted to go instead with Amazon's Unbox video ecommerce service to package its content for online, home entertainment and mobile distribution.
This will allow NBC to sell entire season series of their television shows at hefty prices - about 30 percent off of a per-episode purchase - and in doing to retain some sense of traditional syndication revenues as they move to online distribtion of video content.

It's the syndication picture more than anything else that's at issue in this move, with NBC doubtless having concern that an easily pierced DRM scheme would enable audiences to download episodes that would enable them to bypass both cable networks and affiliates to build their own libraries of shows. The fact that Amazon Unbox also enables access to their video content via TiVos also underscores NBC's desire to solve syndication revenues once and for all.

But in opting for the Unbox approach NBC has doomed their ability to reach growing mobile audiences with the latest and most appealing devices available. Unbox is locked into Microsoft's largely orphaned "Plays for Sure" DRM technology, which supports a dwindling pool of mostly also-ran mobile devices. Given Unbox's ability to support only two licensable devices per purchaser the chaotic environment for delivery platforms is not likely to enable audiences to ensure a smooth transition for their libraries from one platform to another - or to be able to switch to whatever device the rest of the family is not using at the moment to catch their favorite reruns.

As with other types of premium content Amazon is very happy to work with content producers who have long-established business models that they don't want to let go of in the rush for online profits. Video is a good target for these types of services as the delivery mechanism enables on-demand fulfillment with few in-between hassles with one of the most popular and well-managed online ecommerce services. And although Plays for Sure wound up being a good idea that few content and technology producers decided to support at least Amazon has a somewhat open mind to making cross-platform content access a reality. As Microsoft moves to a new generation of its DRM capabilities it could be that this deal is as much about moving to Microsoft as it is about moving to Unbox.

But while Amazon benefits by appealing to established content marketers and becoming a potential cross-platform haven for content producers the timidity of publishers and producers to move to new models will likely hamper Amazon's efforts to become a leader in new premium business models in the long run. The status quo on syndication revenues seems to be just fine for most traditional video content producers just now as they try to adjust to a rapidly shifting revenue mix, but hiding out in the Unbox is likely to create about as many problems as if they had tried to move to the platforms that consumers desire most. Other video producers more willing to work with those platforms will be likely to open up broader audiences for content syndication over time and have more access to market demand on the platforms that consumers want most.

At the end of the day this deal is a battle of the brands, with traditional content syndicators having a hard time adapting their brands to platform providers eager to create their own locks over premium content distribution. What's missing from this mix is a willingness from content producers to make some compromises that will enable them to adapt truly platform-agnostic content packaging that will allow them to meet today's revenue goals as well as tomorrow's as consumers shift rapidly from one type of technology to another. If content producers don't manage this well the value of their content in syndication is bound to diminish rapidly. For now consider NBC's move a noisy vote for here-and-now revenues - with the future of syndication left to other executives after the current batch has parachuted elsewhere.

Labels: apple, DRM, NBC Universal, syndication, video

Reuters reports the news story on CNN's elimination of Reuters as a major supplier of news and video footage, but the story behind the story provided on the Reuters MediaFile weblog gets to some of the meat of the matter. An internal CNN memo surfaced by MediaFile from Editorial Director Richard Griffiths details the sudden and troublesome transition that CNN must manage. The termination of using Reuters content is immediate and global and must include purging clips of Reuters video footage from archived video segments. Though the official story from CNN that it is deciding to make "significant investments" in its own news gathering operation to counter the loss of Reuters content there is some speculation that this is more of a cost-cutting measure or a "play tough" negotiating stance on the contract for syndicated Reuters content.

The truth is probably somewhere in between these two stances. It's hard to imagine that CNN, which has relied strongly on Reuters content for most of its existence, is going to be able to fill the gap easily for coverage lost through dropping Reuters, especially as it impacts their archives so deeply. If this is a strategic move, then one would think that the strategy would have accounted for these losses more smoothly.

To some degree the claim that news feeds and video footage from suppliers such as AP can help to fill the gap may be a major part of the CNN strategy, but the larger factor seems to be how the increasingly context-dependent nature of Web content is changing how content brands are managed online. In dropping a major syndication source such as Reuters CNN is acknowledging that aggregating content from other premium branded suppliers does not necessarily help a publisher to score well in metrics managed by comScore and other audience measurement services that look increasingly at how content gets consumed away from a portal.

This is underscored by portals such as CNN making more aggressive use of their own feeds to users via RSS, search engine positioning and other techniques that are putting their content into on-the-fly contexts that users value more. In this sense, a content brand is built around what it does for an audience in the contexts that they care about most - which may or may not be the brand's parent portal.

While this gives Reuters a bit of a bloody nose in the short run it's also an acknowledgment that their strategy of using Web syndication partners sparingly is paying off to some degree as its own brand begins to gain more prominence through search engines and its increasingly sophisticated portal. However CNN's willingness to stick with content from AP and other wire services may also indicate that Reuters' once-dominant international position in news gathering is eroding to the point that it is becoming harder to position its news effectively in consumer markets. Reuters has also lagged behind AP in seeking out social media partners to build context for its content, and unlike AP does not have the advantage of a membership-driven network that relies on AP in many instances to drive branded news portals in many local markets.

All of this begs a very delicate question: is the Reuters news brand going to be strong enough to survive alone in an era in which traditional syndication is experiencing major challenges? By moving its consumer Web operations away from partners such as CNN over the past few years Reuters has tried to innoculate itself against this very question through its quest to build up non-syndication revenues through advertising and other types of business deals. But with more global news sources than ever before and a surge of user-generated content gaining more authority it is becoming ever-harder for Reuters to define that brand, a move that may be complicated by the eminent takeover of Reuters by Thomson.

Consider, for example, the fact that the far more interesting analysis of this particular story appeared on the Reuters MediaFile weblog. MediaFile is an excellent blog, but it's hardly the only one of its kind. Being able to define their brand effectively online whilst contending with both traditional and non-traditional competitors that can be exposed the the global communications afforded by the Web is going to be an ongoing challenge for Reuters and other major wire services. For now consider CNN the winner in this battle as it gains more freedom to build its brand through online channels for its text and video content, but consider both parties having to scramble to make their news strategies fly in a world of contextual content branding.

Labels: aggregation, CNN, News, Reuters, syndication