The three groups that renewed with you are all equity partners. That seems like an easy call on their part, doesn’t it?
We signed up lots of customers a bunch of years ago – and Hearst, Post-Newsweek and McGraw HIll also made investments into the company. So they are customers and owners. We have to earn their business every day. There are no givens. The most important thing to them is their digital strategy. When you deal with them, we are an aide, [and if we’re doing a good job] then life’s good. So they want to know if we’re helping them – if were not, that’s not a good idea at all.
In the process of renewing the equity partners, they spoke like customers, and they said “Here are the kinds of problems we need to solve.” It was like having a hyper-intensive focus group. It was a liberating process – and they pushed us to take something good and make it great.
What did they ask for as their biggest request?
Innovating so that they can distribute content to the broadest audience in the market, [and] innovating around platform and content. The second is “How do they make money?” How does our ad network produce revenue for the partners? They pushed us to build their audience and ad revenue.
The NBC O&Os left IB. Why do you think they did so?
There was a time – which is no longer true- when the concept behind our company [was that companies would] outsource their digital strategy to IB. Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked really hard on the technology to build whatever they want. It can run the gamut now. At the time, IB was more of an outsourced model. Today we’re fully capable of serving any of the segments of the market.
Why would a station group go with IB as opposed to getting an open source CMS?
First of all – [we have] the benefits of scale and network effect. For a group of customers that have a common set of needs in the local media business, we have a common set of products we’re constantly innovating on. Once you’ve built software, people’s budget doesn’t always allow more, People come here for benefits of scale. It’s much like if people wanted search: they could build it on their own, or they could get Google. Our software has all of the systems that scale for the local media business.
The second reason is that we’ve been around since 1996 and we truly have knowledge and data stored all over the years that lets people get the benefit of shared information. People can still do their own development on our platform. Increasingly, through APIs, we’ve allowed employees of our companies to do work on our platforms. In the original IB world, you’d have to call IB and we’d do it. Now you can have your own people change your site, or we’ll do it for you. We’re empowering people to use the APIs, or we have out terrific professional services [department] do it for them.
What is IB’s mobile strategy?
From a long term standpoint, our publishing platform is being built to publish to any device, no matter how a consumer is getting content. So that’s built into our roadmap going forward. Everyone agrees that location-based information needs to be part of the strategy. At the same time, we know there are local sales staffs that are doing some very fruitful local text sales. It starts there. [In the] short term there are staffs in the market, so let’s give them something to sell today. [In the] long term, our platform will be the conduit to a larger strategy.
We are rolling out apps. The challenge there has been not to miss the window of the future, but at the same time do things that can make money now. I think we’ve waited the appropriate amount of time to come up with a strategy. We listened to the market and understood what the needs are. The way consumers are getting content is changing and is going to [keep changing].
There are still a lot of devices in the market, so while that’s being figured out, we’re coming up with short-term solutions to make money today. By hearing the customers and waiting the appropriate amount of time, I think we’ve hit the right chord from a mobile standpoint. There are certainly other partners that offer solutions that make sense. Our partners should have pick of the market.
What is IB doing in the hyperlocal space?
Our platform is designed to allow our partners to pull in any data they want and extract it and serve it to the consumer. So we’re able to have that on our consumer sites. At the same time our platform can surface hyperlocal information to the consumer. There’s been a lot of press around [that] lately.
In terms of relevance to the consumer, we’re big believers. There are other companies that do a good job of pulling together that information, like DataSphere, and it’s our job to integrate with them. We want to be the combination of the platform and the services that allow stations to build bigger audiences. That’s a full time job – to be the core, empowering platform. There are so many different specialties that we couldn’t possibly be principals in them, so we allow the partners to choose what they want on their sites and try things and see how they work. We want to empower them to do any of that, then we’re very careful to determine what we do or don’t want to focus on. They’re friends.
So you work with outside vendors?
Anyone that’s providing services that provide an audience, we’re friends of. Our job is to provide a platform. And we have people around IB who have the analytics that can make a difference. That’s a really important part of determining what works and doesn’t, and that’s what optimizes their ROI and hopefully grows their business over time.