NewsBeat

6 NewsBeat February 2016 Reuters TV finds value not just in making its content free, but in giving it away to other publishers n a little less than a year, Reuters has completely changed the strategy around its news video product, Reuters TV. It's gone from charging for its iOS app to not just giving its content away for free across many platforms, but also letting other publishers use that content on their own sites and in their own apps. That strategy is paying off in terms of recognition — Apple calls the Reuters TV app one of its "essentials" — and uptake. When Reuters TV was first launched as an iPhone app last February (don't confuse this with the Reuters TV YouTube channel, by the way, which was launched in 2012 but no longer exists), it had a paywall: $1.99 a month, with limited ads. The app lets users choose how long they have to watch — anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes — and then creates a program of news clips tailored to time and interest. Reuters TV is sleek and well designed; its content changes based on your past viewing activity, and it is a genuinely good way to catch up on the news quickly. (You can even download episodes for offline viewing.) But a paywall on an unknown video app hindered adoption. "We were best served by loosening that barrier, particularly at an early stage," Reuters TV managing director Isaac Showman told Digiday last year. Last August, Reuters dropped the paywall on Reuters TV (users can still choose to pay $1.99 a month for an ad-free version). It's launched the app on iPad, Apple TV, and web — with web app users now accounting for 25 percent of all the app's active users, even though the web app only launched last month. In November, Reuters launched Reuters TV for Publishers. "It allows any publisher to come to our website and, free of charge, download a widget that integrates onto their site" and provides a five-minute, curated news program," Showman told me. "They're able to put their ads in front of it and they keep 100 percent of the revenue." The signup process is designed to be quick; publishers customize their fonts and insert ad tags, then get the code for the embeddable widget. The payoff for Reuters, Showman said, is that more people become familiar with Reuters TV's brand. The Reuters TV for Publishers app includes links back to Reuters' website and social sharing buttons, as well as an option for users to enter their phone number to get a download link for the mobile app. "Sometimes we're going to reach consumers on our own platforms, and sometimes we're quite happy for that to be on other people's platforms," Showman explained. "If we can contribute to other publishers' success as a part of that, it's a win-win for both of us, and something we're really happy to do." Since the offering rolled out in November, "dozens" of publishers have integrated it onto their sites, "with more signing up each day," Showman said. Reuters wouldn't give me a full list of participants, but pointed me to an Entrepreneur.com article and to Canada's Globe and Mail. (If you have an adblocker turned on, you have to turn it off to see Reuters TV's widget.) The Globe and Mail added the widget to its main news page on December 9, and plans to roll it out on mobile later this week. "We're testing reader appetite for five-minute news verticals," Cynthia Young, The Globe and Mail's head of audience, told me. "We wanted to see whether our readers like that kind of packaging for news." Embracing distributed content: "Sometimes we're going to reach consumers on our own platforms, and sometimes we're quite happy for that to be on other people's platforms." By LAURA HAZARD OWEN I

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