NLA media access, PLS and PPA champion digital rights

This morning NLA media access co-hosted an two hour session event with the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and Professional Publishers Association looking at how appropriate rights can be secured in an efficient, transparent and fair manner.

As the PPA set out in their event brief, the diversification of publishing from print editions into a mix of online, tablet, mobile and other media means that acquiring the most appropriate rights can be a complex endeavour. For publishers, capturing additional revenue streams from new platforms can be hampered where appropriate agreements with contributors do not clearly and fairly allow re-use of content.

From the NLA Lis Ribbans, former Managing Editor of The Guardian, was an expert guest speaker sharing her views on how rights management has evolved and best practice for the future.

She was joined by Michael Pocock, Head of Licensing & Syndication at the Independent and Andrew Horton, Director, Content & Brand Licensing, Time Inc.

For further information on NLA’s work in this area please contact publisherservices@nla.co.uk. 

NLA media access showcases new PR measurement tool

NLA showcased our Article Impact Measurement (AIM) tool to an audience of PR professionals at a News UK hosted event last week. On the day, we demonstrated the insights available via AIM and also worked with our own retained agency, Blue Rubicon, to showcase its importance to the evaluation metrics of the PR industry.  

Through our relationship with publishers, NLA is now able to provide media monitoring agencies and their PR clients with valuable and previously unavailable data from newspaper publishers. First launched in October last year, AIM uniquely captures the number of views of articles on ten national newspaper websites and the number of times an article is republished on third party websites. This new layer of data greatly improves the accuracy of measurement for the PR industry and can help solve once and for all that burning client question – “How many people have read this story?”

From the discussion, expertly chaired by Helen Dunne of CorpComms, it was clear that the PR industry is open to new measurement metrics and that AIM is an important step in the right direction. There was an almost universal view that the measure of advertising value equivalent (AVEs) has had its day, and a similar story emerged in the use of online Opportunities to See (OTS) measurements too. As Mark from Blue Rubicon pointed out, just 60 comments on the Guardian website means an OTS equal to the world’s population!  

As the event closed there was a clear buzz in the room about the potential for AIM as an importance piece in the PR measurement jigsaw. Barry Leggetter, CEO of the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), the global trade body for communications measurement, was again supportive of the development of AIM and its ability to complement and enhance existing services.

The NLA team are now following up with all attendees and a number of other warm leads to ensure that AIM can deliver on its potential to greatly improve impact measurement for the PR industry.

If you are a business or PR agency interested in a trial of the AIM product, please contact Bob Johns on bjohns@nla.co.uk

NLA MEDIA ACCESS ANNUAL REPORT

The NLA media access annual report, published today provides an overview of activity and financial results for the financial year ending December 2014 and a preview of new projects and services for 2015.

In 2014, publisher revenues increased significantly. The major contributor to that growth came from magazine licensing, as 2014 was the first full year of licensing the print and web edition content for ‘magazine’ publishers, but revenues earned for publishers of national and regional newspapers also grew in the year.

New database services for publishers and media monitoring agencies will be rolled out or expanded during the course of 2015. Media monitoring agencies and their clients will benefit from the new Article Impact Measurement service, enabling them to track readership and social media discussion of web-published articles on news sites. An increasing number of publishers are now using the Online Article Tracking Service, which identifies copyright infringement on the web and publishers will also benefit from the launch of a new version of the ClipShare service for journalists, which is due to be launched in the second quarter of 2015.

Royalties paid to publishers in 2014 equated to the cost of employing 1,300 journalists.

In 2015 we will continue our commitment to supporting journalism, not only by striving to increase revenue, but through our support of the Journalism Diversity Fund – where our total contribution will break through the £1m level this year as we celebrate the Fund’s 10-year anniversary.

 All of these points and a great many more are covered in the report.

NLA analysis shows regional newspapers growth

Newsprint decline, particularly regional, is a popular topic by industry commentators (“Regional newspaper titles suffer yet more substantial sales declines”, here), and while we have no opinion on the broader debate,  NLA media access does have a unique position to assess pagination and article trends across a vast number of UK newspapers due to the hosting of content in our eClips database.

The results might be surprising. As this chart below shows, while national news pages are declining, the regional press is on the up, and 2013 versus 2014 was no exception. Take a couple of examples:  the Halifax Evening Courier pagination was up 32%, and article counts up 11%, while the Islington Gazette had pagination up 16% and article counts up 14%. Impressive stuff.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising to some avid readers of local news. Brits spend 85% of their life within 10 miles of where they live – interest in local news is bound to be there.

Many local papers have great brand strength and are investing in new ways to tie in readers. 2014 saw the launch of London Live TV, possibly helping out its print partner the London Evening Standard - daily readership of the ES recently grew by more than a third in  the past 12 months (Source: National Readership Survey).

My local paper, the Gravesend Messenger (part of the KM Group) ties me in across multiple platforms. I can engage directly with its journalists and other readers through social media, and follow breaking news on its website before enjoying full stories in the weekly print edition. KM Group’s investment in their brands seems to be transitioning to their collective licensing revenues. In the last five years, NLA royalties paid back to KM Group have doubled.

Gaffs and Graphs – Using AIM to measure political impact

So who dug the biggest PR hole and jumped into it;- the car crash Green leader who couldn’t price a housebuilding pledge or the venerable foreign secretaries seeking a nice little earner? Our PR team at Open Road – Blue Rubicon have been using the NLA AIM service to measure reaction to the two major political stories last week, which they have posted on their blog here. It’s well worth a read in itself, and shows how smart PRCs could be using the new service to derive unique insights from the unique page view data AIM now offers.

NLA are delighted with market reaction to AIM. We are planning a round table for leading PRCs at News UK’s fabulous new Baby Shard HQ. Watch this space.