Mediaspectrum's "cloud-based" CMS

Mediaspectrum reports massive cost-savings for newspapers using its Web-based platform.

50 more newspapers have launched on the platform since September, 2009.

In early 2009, the company announced that its clients were showing cost savings of more than 50 percent in key departments, as well as seven-figure revenue gains from Mediaspectrum’s self-serve advertising products. Industry experts like Ken Doctor say the cost savings from Mediaspectrum’s centralized software are both phenomenal and underutilized.

“We’ve created massive savings by centralizing large newspaper companies,” says Jay Cody, vice-president of sales. “Now we want to create massive savings by consolidating the industry.”

Newspapers online development - and its internal cost structures - are often trapped by legacy software choices made years ago.

“What would take a newspaper 300 people to do, we can do with ten,” say Jay Cody, vice-president of sales. “We will allow newspapers to restructure.”

All newspapers who sign up for the web-based system will be allowed simultaneous access. Last year the company opened the platform to smaller publishers who can use the software on a revenue share basis or choose to license the system.

Cloud computing by definition is just internet-based hosting and platforming – consolidating what once happened in-house onto the Internet, and lowering costs in the process. Big newspaper chains have legacy systems that are not always integrated and that require multiple staff members to operate. Centralizing knocks major overhead and helps reduce company size, or allow for reallocation of jobs.

While other software companies offer web-based functionality, Cody says MediaSpectrum’s is the only one that is “purely web-based” and thus free of server-based legacy software that still has to be hosted, integrated and updated. The company has about 30 customers with 750 sitess on the platform.

“Let’s take Trinity Mirror, which has 250 publications and 500 web sites, the largest publishing in the United Kingdom. They had five different legacy systems, and each one of these had a local installation. So they have hundreds of these systems and each one needs a local staff, production and sales because nothing can be centralized,” he says.

“We allow them to centralize everything with one central log in, IT staff, and production system through the browser. Even editorial is 100% browser-based including print, web and video. The savings on centralization are massive.”

Like Trinity most Mediaspectrum clients are large, complicated print-to-web-and-back companies like USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post.

Recently however, chains of smaller sites including Sandusky and The Dispatch Company have launched on the platform.

Companies that have deployed Mediaspectrum’s platform sometimes have started out cautious but have ended up being enthusiastic. For example, the Chicago Tribune installed a single self-service advertising portal to support advertiser interactions, including print, web, and video. When Tribune executives saw how effective the system was at drawing in advertisers, they raced to install the system company-wide and have become an advocate of the software.

Addressing a meeting of the Newspaper Association of America, Tribune executive Mike Sacks said the self-service portal was generating “over seven figures … it’s real money.”

The UK’s Trinity Mirror is also a success story. The company started with the goal of making its business leaner with a clear-cut path toward growth. It hired IBM Change Specialists to design and implement radical structural changes throughout the organization, which wound up including the deployment of Mediaspectrum’s Media 2.0 platform.

A year later, an IBM case study high-lighted Mediaspectrum as the essential platform for the transformation, pointing to its help in centralizing Trinity’s editorial, advertising, and technological operations. According to the study, the platform was a major factor in:

• A 30% editorial and advertising cost savings in one region (20% in other regions)
• Improved ability to create multi-media content and offer multi-media advertising
• A platform for future revenue growth through enhanced business and technical capability
• Better service for advertising customers by providing the most appropriate mix of field sales, telephone sales, and web self-service
• Faster delivery of news

Revenues for Mediaspectrum have soared as a result, from $1.2 million in 2005 to $14.6 million in 2008. In 2009, Mediaspectrum was named the fastest-growing software company in Boston by INC magazine, and made it into the Red Herring Top 100 Most Promising Tech Companies.

Here’s a breakdown of the products:

1. Advertising

AdSalesForce, what the company calls the “ultimate thin client ad order entry solution,” centralizes booking, component management, customer information, and ratings processes. The system supports both traditional classified and retail ads as well as new media ad types such as banner ads and skyscrapers and self-service, advertising portals.

The Ad Production Suite includes AdWatch (tracking, content management), online proofing and content submission, ad/content submission and sharing portals, and template-driven online ad building. Billing supports anything from simple to complex rating and all billing requirements.

2. Content

The ContentWatch software is an editorial and Web content production platform with wire, archive, and page layout solutions. It integrates with Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign/InCopy.

3. Community & Commerce

This software manages web-based business architecture in which browser access to networked, shared resource platforms enable collaboration across markets. Business activities accessible by a browser can be given to a consumer or supplier as self service, or outsourced to the home or abroad. Software components can be co-developed. Consumer, vendors and suppliers can provide widgets, content, work, ideas.

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

Keywords