• by Melynda Fuller , November 20, 2017

Facebook’s customized newsfeed has left traditional digital publishers scrambling to find innovative ways to broadcast their content in a way that catches and, most importantly, retains readers’ attention. To aid this mission, British technology company Newsroom AI introduced a platform that will allow any publisher to create a similarly customized newsfeed of content to meet users needs.

According to Mihai Fanache, the founder and CEO of Newsroom AI, the average user spends 40 minutes every day on Facebook, while digital publishers have a one-minute retention. He believes by customizing content for users, a publication can achieve higher retention rates, while also eliminating the need for overlapping content.

Using a single line of code, Newsroom AI allows a publication to gather stories from across its site and to incorporate content from similar outlets. That permits it to fill in gaps in coverage without adding additional stress to its editorial output.

Prices start at $899 per month.

A wide range of digital publishers, including large television stations, spent 10 months testing the platform and saw a 400% increase in the time users spent on their sites, and a six-fold increase in revenue per user, per the company.

In a move to capitalize on user data, the platform translates those numbers into useable metrics that enable digital publishers to quickly test new layouts and content recommendations — a process that once took from months to under 48 hours. The platform also incorporates the “rich functionality” of mobile apps, like instant loading article pages for easier browsing.

Fanache thinks this technology can also help niche markets, such as local news coverage, which has witnessed a decline with the closing of smaller newspapers and local sections in large publications like The New York Times.

The distribution of digital media, like video content, which can be costly and time consuming, is also easily shared across a holding group, eliminating overlap.

“We need to be clear on one thing — there is enough content on the internet already. So in hindsight, building more of the same thing will be a painful lesson that publishers will be learning a few years from now,” says Fanache.