Press Forward: Video Technology for Newspapers and Magazines

DECEMBER 2011
Press FORWARD
A Contextual Video Strategy for Today’s
Newspaper & Magazine Industries
By Grant Crowell
www.RAMP.com

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Press FORWARD: A Contextual Video Strategy for Today’s Newspaper & Magazine Industries
Executive Summary
Traditional journalism companies such as newspapers and magazines acknowledge that to be financially solvent
today, they must find better ways of engaging with online audiences and imagining new opportunities to monetize
content. Online video has provided print media companies an attractive vehicle for engagement with broad
audiences, but it remains a challenge for these firms to build revenue streams in a media universe increasingly
dominated by search and social media.
Just as they evolved from print-only publications to digital “eEditions,”
newspapers and magazines today must further evolve from delivering
better content to creating better context for their online consumers. Simply
producing professional-quality videos of breaking news and features has
proven insufficient to win the loyalty of online audiences. Instead, news
publishers must now build engaging experiences around their content that
allow audiences to see new value in their visits.
A new business strategy is emerging for traditional media, grounded in
online video technology and characterized by fresh approaches to journalism,
audiences, discovery, engagement, and monetization. This is a lean forward
contextual video strategy, and it demands that traditional media provide
a greater role for experimentation, collaboration and community among
journalists, their content partners, and their audiences.
As today’s audiences demand a greater role in their online experience, a “lean forward” contextual video strategy
can allow publishers to compete effectively for consumer allegiance. This strategy can help traditional media
shift to a new and sustainable business model – built on context, collaboration, community, and conversions. It
meets the needs of all stakeholders – the newsroom, users, advertisers, sponsors, and investors. It keeps one eye
on ever-improving, ever-adapting, quality journalism and community experience and the other on bottom line
improvements through better content monetization.
Introduction
Stop listening to newspaper people. We have had nearly 15 years to figure out the Web and
as an industry we newspaper people are no good at it. No good at it at all. Want to get good
at it? Then stop listening to the newspaper people and start listening to the rest of the world.
And, I would point out, as we have done — put the digital people in charge – of everything.”
– John Paton, then-CEO of the Journal Register Company, at the INMA Transformation of News Summit
December 2, 2010
Since implementing our ‘Digital First’ strategy in mid 2010 our Digital audience has doubled
to more than 12.3 million uniques, and our entire audience has grown from 14.9 million monthly
customers on all platforms to nearly 21 million customers. That’s more customers for what we
have to offer, a lot more… Now together, we are going to accelerate that transformation.
All of us have one goal – to preserve quality journalism in the communities we serve. And we are
going to bring along the ‘Crowd’ to help us.”
– John Paton, CEO of Digital First
September 7, 2011
For newspapers and other
print-based journalism to be
financially solvent and thrive
as trusted leaders in news
for their communities, they
must adopt a “lean forward”
contextual strategy around
online video.
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A History and Background
In 2009, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities issued a report on the newspaper
industry. While the Commission’s study was a sober forecast of the financial outlook for print-based news
journalism, an important insight emerged: “Journalistic institutions do not need saving so much as they need
creating. Both private and public investments are needed to exploit this moment of journalistic opportunity fully.”
In June 23, 2011, The Knight Commission published an updated study. In this white paper titled Re-Imagining
Journalism, Local News for a Networked World, Mike Fancher, former Seattle Times Executive Editor, concurred
with the findings of the earlier report and added that “The same digital network technology that is disrupting
the business model for American journalism can lead to a new ecology of journalism in which reporters and their
publics intermix in new ways.”
The Pew Research Center’s State of Media 2011 Report, released March 14, 2011, had this to say:
The biggest issue ahead may not be lack of audience or even lack of new revenue experiments. In a
media world where consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it, the future
will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and
advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user. That knowledge — and the expertise in gathering it
— increasingly resides with technology companies outside journalism.”
“Lean Forward” Contextual Video Strategy, Explained
An Overview
This new business strategy for online news publishers rests on three foundation elements: The content (video);
the consumer activity (lean forward); and the circumstances (context).
1 Video: Digital content involving dynamic images and audio that is discoverable, accessible, engaging,
and can be monetized.
2 Lean Forward: Consumer interactions around the video – with the technology, publisher, journalist,
advertisers, and the community.
3 Context: Presentation intelligence that involves having a real understanding of the circumstances and
intent of consumers experiencing a video – including the device, location, discovery type, and social
network – and tailoring the experience to each consumer.
Newspapers have mastered the first component – the content of the video. They have been excellent at
producing interesting and relevant videos that are newsworthy. But today’s market requires more than great
content; the video assets must be discoverable and effectively monetized. Publishers must understand the other
two components of this strategy – “lean forward” and context, and master the proper technology to create a
compelling online presence.
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©2011 RAMP
“Lean Forward” video, explained
To ‘lean forward‘ is to think bigger, listen closer, fight smarter, and act faster. To celebrate the best ideas,
no matter where they come from.”
– msnbc.com
‘Lean forward’ describes today’s worldwide, always-connected, highly participatory digital culture. Yesterday’s
audiences were passive consumers of print journalism. Today they are highly interactive content producers as
well. Where traditional news journalism was one-way information, ‘lean forward’ news journalism is about multi-
way conversations.
Interactive technology enables more meaningful connections between news producers and consumers
than ever before… journalism must be re-invented as an interactive endeavor if it is to remain relevant
and accountable.”
– Mike Fancher, Reynolds Visiting Chair, University of Nevada in Reno
Success with the ‘lean forward’ model for news journalism
RAMP engaged in a study with 3 major U.S. news publishing sites to research the effects of “lean forward” video
strategies. The publishers agreed to host the RAMP white label interactive video player in order to develop
statistical analyses of consumer interaction activity. (see Lean Forward Video – The New Rules of Publishing Video
on the Internet, RAMP May, 2010)
“What we found was that 20% of the folks who actually engaged with lean forward features consumed on
average 4 times the number of video streams in a session – meaning, jumping to time-stamped tags, using
transcript search, and viewing contextually related content.” said Joe Lichtman, VP Product for RAMP. “That said
to us that once people understand what these features are, they’re able to get more out of the experience, they
enjoy it more, and they consume more video.”
Examples of “lean forward” video technology in action
The RAMP study cites examples of ‘lean forward’ activity commonly applied to digital video content on the Web
and mobile apps today:
Search across a catalog of videos with precise keyword search capability;
Search within a video using keywords and key phrases to find the precise areas of interest to the viewer;
Navigate within a video using tags or markers that correspond to specific events in the video or specific
topics of interest to the viewer;
Navigate a video using thumbnail scenes that render the video as a storyboard of clips that users can
select and watch according to individual preferences, usually for sports or news content;
Clip, share and embed video clips for reuse on blogs, websites, social networks such as Facebook and
social recommendation engines such as Digg and del.icio.us;
Browse and view related content that is relevant to, and presented in context with key concepts that occur
in the time-line of the video.
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Contextual video, explained
‘Contextual video’ means more than staging news content in a video format. It requires an understanding of the
context in which audiences may engage with it and providing them with tools for interactive engagement.
Publishers must take into account all of the following with their consumers:
The technology device they are using
Their present location
The content relevant to their intent
The communities with which they engage
The time they have available
Contextual video is innovative but not futuristic – it has been available to online media for several years and has
been continually enhanced by technology solution providers.
Steve Rotter, Director of Product Marketing at Brightcove says “When a user interacts with a news publisher’s
video today, they’re making immediate decisions about the value of that interaction – not just with the news
publisher’s content, but also the context of the full user experience – content, presentation, platform, social,
advertising – for a value proposition that relates well to their world.”
Contextual video technology examples
Technology solution providers are already offering a more contextually relevant experience around online video
in a number of ways, including:
Social engagement buttons and sharing links
Clip-and-share
Automated and interactive transcriptions
In-video keyword search
Time-stamped keywords in the video player scroll bar
Closed captioning
Related videos (and other content related to the video)
Recommended videos
User submissions
Related/targeted video ads appearing along the video in a synchronized fashion (time stamped)
Clickable links in or around the video (related to the content of the ad)

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The contextual video experience itself can incorporate content, presentation style, recommendations, social
technologies, and consumer participation strategies. What is especially notable is that this experience is not at all
dependent on a user’s login or cookie data. The video experience can actually offer the user an enhanced level
of privacy.
How newspapers create value with contextual video for stakeholders
Brightcove’s Rotter explains that newspaper and magazine companies today rely on OVPs (Online Video Platform
Providers) to assist them with the ability to provide “contextual publishing” to their audience. For example, the
news publisher may have video about a particular story, “but there may be five other videos that are related.”,
he said.
“What an OVP does is automatically recognize that content by looking at tags – looking at either content on
the page or looking at tags on the videos – and builds the related content (including other videos) on the fly.
With that contextual publishing around video working in your favor, you have much greater stickiness with your
audience and much greater ability to serve ad content.”
Here are some of the add-ons of contextual video technologies for news publishers today:
Better search queries (“match,” “exact,” “phrase,” or “broad”) and filtered search results;
Recommendations of “related” videos – i.e., suggesting relevant videos to targeted users according to
their historical and current viewings or preferences;“
User feedback and popularity (i.e., ratings, reviews, views, clicks, comments, etc.);
Relevance to news stories;
Presentation suitable for the device, operating system, or browser;
Pairing of video with content, conversations, communities, advertising, and incentives.
Contextual video’s need for rich metadata
Metadata is the backbone for technology developers to provide contextual video solutions. Here is an explanation
from RAMP of the role of metadata in lean forward contextual video:
The lean forward experience is largely driven by the publisher’s ability to extract specific facets of video
content through use of sophisticated semantic technologies, which are in turn rendered as specific
usability features through applying additional publishing and playback technologies and solutions.
Lean forward features are based on extracting specific attributes of videos by way of transcripts and
metadata. These attributes enable lean forward features by providing interactive capabilities along the
video timeline. The tags and cue points associated with this metadata make the video searchable using
keyword search common on the Internet and can also be used to drive search engine optimization,
or SEO.”
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Metadata is what gives video context and enhances the interactive experience, for both search and sharing.
Metadata includes the speech transcripts, time-stamped tags, categories/topics, named entities, geo-location
and tagged thumbnails that comprise the backbone of the interactive Web.
A few technology providers today use natural language processing technology to quickly turn video content
into textual data. Some go further by creating universal sets of metadata (tags and categories) for the same text
content across all videos. The universal metadata of the video, in turn, is used for interactive features around that
same video as well as textual data – sometimes both of them side-by-side.
Business priorities for newspapers with lean forward contextual video
Newspapers and news publishers pursuing a “lean forward” contextual video strategy should prioritize:
Having video content that’s easily discoverable and most relevant to consumers’ search and browsing
activities;
Customizing the video experience for the device and platform;
Keeping users engaged with interactive features;
Making videos easily embeddable and shareable;
Quickly distributing videos to multiple social media channels and in context with the social networking
experience;
Looking for monetization opportunities with both multiple revenue streams and matching ads to the
video experience;
Working with a technology provider specializing in OVP and video content management; solutions that
can provide a seamless workﬂow with the newsroom and digital management team.
New Approaches
Interactive Video Transcripts
More online media sites today are offering contextual publishing approaches with their online video leveraging
computer-generated transcriptions. The OVP-provided speech-to-text technology will capture the audio from a
video and then generate a full transcript in text with interactive features to enable consumer controls.

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Some examples of automated transcripts of video content, such as RAMP solution for FOX News (above), or the
program on the MSNBC.com website (below), provide the following interactive features:
Search the entire transcript and find keywords that play the video at certain time points;
Clip and share parts of a video from in-and-out transcript points;
Closed captioning (including the option of multiple languages);
Metadata highlights (automated and manual) of choice keywords called out within the transcript and
visible in the video player’s horizontal scrollbar;
Better discovery and filtering using time stamps on specific keywords or phrases.

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Big boost to SEO
Tom Wilde is the CEO of RAMP, a closed-captioning technology solution for video and Brightcove partner.
According to Wilde:
Google struggles with videos because they present very little in the way of index-able content. A typical
video might have 20-30 words associated with it in the form of title and description. Video transcription
creates on average 10 times more index-able items for the search engines. Combined with video sitemaps
and video landing pages, publishers can see dramatic improvement in video discovery on the major search
engines.”
Better search ability
Wilde also states that video transcription results in a
big boost in video discovery on a given site. RAMP’s
research has shown that video transcription can drive as
much as 950% increase in video search recall.
Better social sharing
Wilde also adds “the increases in social sharing means
that videos need to be linkable and discoverable. Video
transcripts and video permalink landing pages enables
easy social sharing and social discoverability.”
Increased accessibility
Finally, high quality transcription is a prerequisite for accurate translation. If broadening your audience is a goal,
captioning should be a no brainer. It not only provides a way for non-English speakers to follow along more easily,
it’s also a necessary step for foreign language subtitles.
Need for immediacy
Brightcove’s Steve Rotter is another strong advocate of interactive transcripts in news journalism videos. “Users
today not only want to be able to watch a video in real time; they want to be able to extract the information from
that video in as little time as possible. That’s especially true with long-format videos. “People just don’t want to
wait,” he said.
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Need for mobility
“The user experience is highly important and
today you are thinking about people who are
highly mobile.” said Rotter. “So someone who
knows that they can go to a trusted news site and
be able to navigate to exactly the part of content
they want to see, that’s going to drive stickiness.”
he said.
Better ad targeting
“Contextual publishing with video transcripts is
going to be huge for newspapers for revenue
purposes,” adds Rotter. “Being able to take
content for a particular video, and basically scan
some of the transcripts for related tags and terms,
really drives not just that news site’s publishing strategy, but their business strategy as well. Ultimately this can
result in better targeting of ads and ﬁne-tuning of the ad sale. So contextual publishing doesn’t just boost SEO,
but also results in valuable beneﬁts around ad targeting, social interaction, and the recommendation experience.”
Future monetization opportunity: In-text
advertising of automated video transcripts
Brightcove’s Rotter also believes that in-text
advertising will be integrated into automated
transcript technologies in the near future,
providing a boost in ad revenue opportunities
from click-thru text links in the transcript. For
example, clicking on a text link in an automated
video transcript could simultaneously take
consumers to the correct position in the video,
and showcase a contextual ad based on the text
which was selected by the user.
Interactive Video Players
RAMP recently developed an iPad friendly prototype contextual video experience for FoxSports.com.
“What we tried to do is create an interesting interactive, but also dynamic experience during the playback of the
video to create a complementary web experience.” said RAMP’s VP of Product, Joe Lichtman.
The video player interface features related content, presented in different boxes of the player, that is triggered
by context “cues” in the video time-line.

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©2011 RAMP
One example of a best practice in this area is the advertorial for Southwest Airlines: (See screenshot below)
On the first reference to Southwest in the spoken
word audio, a Southwest Airlines logo appears
and the background changes to the Southwest
“blue sky”. Later, when the video player reaches
its final reference to Southwest, an animated
Southwest plane “flies” across the player. The
result is very dynamic and engaging advertising
that is synchronized with what’s actually being said.
Other types of rich contextual content can be
synchronized with the main video stream. For
example, during the playback, the lower right
box can feature images and twitter feeds that are
synchronized with references to specific athletes
or teams.
Even at the completion of the single video stream,
the user is given many contextual options for
what to do next, continuing the ‘lean forward’
experience for them.
“People are getting more creative with either
subscription services or sponsored parts of the
sites” said Brightcove’s Rotter. “News publishers
are looking to drive other monetization options
around a particular section or news series, with
a ‘sponsored by’ approach that’s part of the user
experience (and not separate from it like most
pre-roll ads). Being able to sell and customize
the player environment so it has that kind of
“sponsored feel” to it is an innovative monetization
option that deserves to be explored.”
Fresh Ideas
The promise of contextual video inspires many ideas for game-changing, technology-based opportunities. Here
are just a few:
A social video news app. Similar to the popular social news app Flipboard, an app could be designed
to allow users to customize their own “video wall” of news stories – both from filtered sources and
keyword searches, as well as social or publisher recommendations. This could also be positioned as a
social video platform geared to present content from newspapers’ websites or their media partners
This app would provide for tailor-made video content with the click of an app on the mobile device, along
with new feeds of content relevant to the user, and with social media sharing tools already in place.

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Email news alerts with embeddable video. People who register with newspaper websites could be
notified via email when new videos are available. Notifications can be real-time or periodic (e.g. daily or
weekly) with filtering available by news categories or by whatever metadata filter they may wish to set
(similar to “Google Alerts” for a publisher’s video search engine). With HTML5 video becoming more
ubiquitous, email alerts will also be able to embed actual video, which can play directly within the email
without requiring the user to navigate to the newspaper website.
In-text advertising within interactive video transcripts. Having access to both the video and the
actual text transcript of the video opens opportunities for finer targeting of keywords and ad space.
Developing sophisticated analytic capabilities in this area will enable online media companies to take
advantage of the growth of online ad spend to create an expanded revenue stream.
User incentives. Newspapers can partner with local ‘daily deals’ sites like Groupon and LivingSocial to
deliver sponsored video with integrated offers, coupons or discounts. This can be provided in overlays
during the news video playback, or as pre-rolls, mid-rolls, or post-rolls depending on the type of video
content and length.
Metadata synchronization with local advertisers. Metadata from a newspapers’ video could pull up
relevant advertising that can be displayed either adjacent to the news and featured video, “allowing for
simultaneous storytelling and shopping.”
Enhanced Video in QR Codes. News stories in printed newspapers can be automatically paired with QR
codes of related videos, and/or with video ads or sponsored videos.
Streaming professional events and workshops. Newspapers could consider workshop series featuring
local business experts and community leaders, and have the content available in live streaming and
archived “on demand” video format.
Conclusion
Recommendations for the newspaper industry on a lean forward contextual video
solution
As many of the industry experts we’ve quoted here have attested, newspapers and others businesses with their
roots in “traditional” media, if they expect to thrive, must do the following:
Treat their news model as an interactive endeavor that more actively engages with users, beyond content
to context, and encourages user involvement in return.
Use the latest digital media technologies for online video and bring content and contextual ideas
together to build engaged audiences on those technologies.
Become a multi-platform company – where the video experience is seamless between Web, tablets, and
smartphones.
Apply many distribution and revenue models to their video endeavors – rather than treating one as an
industry savior.

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Invest in the digital video capacity of their newsroom staffs – infrastructure, training, and regular
production time – and have media partners cross train and collaborate with each other.
Create regional and local news networks to share costs of video whenever possible.
Collaborate with emerging and non-traditional media startups in video, including content partnerships
for relevant and contextual videos.
Invest in a professional online video platform that can provide a lean forward contextual video solution
– one that either integrates with existing CMS and other media technologies in use, or that can be a
standalone technology.
A lean forward, contextual video strategy with the right technology platform can meet the workflow, discovery,
engagement, monetization and other crucial business needs of the news and newspaper industry. Applications
of contextual video have been proven to maximize content, community, and revenue opportunities. This is a
solution that is available now and meets the needs of the publisher, the newsroom staff, the end user, the
advertiser, and the investor.
Bios
About the Author
Grant Crowell has been writing professionally in the online marketing space since 1996. He is the senior
media analyst, podcast show host, and vlogger for ReelSEO.com – an online magazine dedicated to news and
marketing strategies with online video. Grant’s regular coverage for ReelSEO includes video in SEO (VSEO), social
media optimization (SMO), legal issues, and tutorials. He is also a regular columnist for The Video Commerce
Consortium (Video-Commerce.org), covering news and marketing strategies in video retail and eCommerce.
Grant is the author of the 2009 white paper Business Models for New Realities: The Newspaper Industry’s Video
SEO Opportunity.
grant@reelseo.com reelseo.com/about/grant @grantcrowell
815.261.4170 (main) grantcrowell (Skype)
About The Sponsor
RAMP is a Content Optimization SaaS platform providing publishers’ workflow, discovery and engagement
solutions to drive monetization of online content to users’ search and browsing behavior. RAMP offers publishers
an open, flexible and modular capability to optimize large amounts of content, including text, audio, video
and images, within dynamic publishing environments. As a result, publishers’ content becomes positioned for
discovery and precise targeting, both on search engines and within publishers’ own websites. Users rely on
such precision to discover and engage with content, thereby increasing the commercial viability of content for
publishers while curtailing publishing costs.
Leading publishers using RAMP include –Thomson Reuters, FOXNews, NBC, Dow Jones, Meredith, and others.
For more information visit: www.RAMP.com, or contact info@RAMP.com.
27 Wormwood St, Suite 210, Boston, MA 02210 info@RAMP.com
857-202-3500 (main) 857-202-3501 (fax)

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