When personalized news reader app Zite launched a year ago, it was greeted with a cease-and-desist letter from a group of large publishers, including Advance Publications, The Washington Post
and Time Inc. The companies took issue with Zite -- pulling in their content and reformatting it in a way that stripped out surrounding Web site material, including ads.
Zite was able to
sidestep that legal dust-up, but has since tried to forge better relations with the big publishers whose content its sleek iPad app tailors to a user’s specific interests, based on reading
habits, viewing patterns, and Google Reader or Twitter history.
The result is a new program that gives participating publishers their own dedicated sections on Zite, which maintain their particular look and feel and allow them to upsell mobile apps or
subscription services via house ads. Among the initial group of companies joining the publisher program are CNN -- which acquired Zite last August -- HLNtv, The Daily Beast, Motley Fool, The Next Web,
VentureBeat, Fox Sports and The Huffington Post.
Perhaps most attractive to Zite’s publisher partners is the option to run a banner ad at the end of articles promoting other content,
including apps and any paid services. “Publishers are spending a lot of money right now on applications for iPhone, iPad, what have you -- but discovery is a big problem,” noted Zite CEO
Mark Johnson. The house ads in Zite are aimed at helping to solve that problem by reaching people who are already using an app. He added that the arrangements involve no money changing hands.
What publishers get under the new offering are their own sections within the app instead of having all of their content filtered by topic. The section will carry each publisher’s own branding
and articles curated according to a user’s interests and tastes, using Zite’s algorithm. The interface is designed to allow fast, easy access to stories; publishers will get regular
analytics reports to track interaction with their material.
How will individual publisher sections be found by Zite users?
Johnson said someone reading an article under a certain topic
like politics, sports or technology would have the ability to add that publisher’s section to their selected material. Publishers will also have the opportunity to target readers based on their
interests, and be featured in some fashion in the app’s start page. He emphasized that the app helps extend audiences just by the nature of its design.
Zite, which added a version of
its app for the iPhone in December, has not publicly disclosed how many downloads or active users it has. Zite competes with rival news reader apps, such as Flipboard, Pulse and AOL's Editions.