United Robots is now live with six different automated content products across some 30 newsrooms in the US – with Weather Warnings and Real Estate sales the most popular ones, and Wildfire updates the most recent. Insights from our work with our US publisher partners include that it's important to decide why and how you're automating content production, and that there are different ways for that content to generate value for your newsroom and readers.
By Cecilia Campbell
United Robots has grown significantly, particularly in the past few years, and particularly in the US. I think it’s fair to say that our learning curve has been as steep as that of our clients – who are now almost exclusively local media companies. Along the way we – and they – have learned what works, and what doesn’t (let’s not dwell on the Lottery Bot we built for Newsweek!).
When we built the first text robot back in 2015 (a sports robot whose first texts covered local bandy matches in the north of Sweden) we had no clear idea of where we were heading. Looking back, we’ve had some key lightbulb moments, and so have the publishers we work with. For United Robots, an important milestone came in early 2022 when we realised that our content is particularly useful for local news media – most of our clients now fall into this category.
So what have we learned? We’ve learned that, as long as we can prove that our products provide value to local newsrooms and their readers, editors are very much open to trying out automated content. In the US, we currently have six different automated content products live at some 30 local news titles (see map). Some, like Weather warnings, have a strong timing element to them – the content keeps the public updated on critical developments. Others, like Real estate sales, are more about being able to publish a greater volume of stories that are relevant on a hyperlocal level. Whatever the automated content type, the product consists of ready-to-publish texts, usually accompanied by an image.
All our automated content products are built on quality data from providers like the National Weather Service.
Automation is not enough in itself. The key insight from our publisher partners is that – as with any tech – there’s no point using it simply because it’s there. In other words, automation is not a value in itself, it’s all about what it allows the newsroom to do. For example: a key advantage of the automated weather warning articles is that they constitute around the clock coverage of critical events in the community, whether or not there are reporters in the newsroom. Matt Dowling, Director of Breaking and Local News at NJ Advance Media, who have published automated weather warnings since the autumn of 2023, explains the significance: “We're unstaffed six hours on weekdays and about seven hours on weekends, and on weekends we don't always have a weather expert working. So the automatically updated articles really help complement the times of days where we don't have the people with the expertise to handle the larger stories on weather reporting in particular.”
Fill in the gaps in your reporting. Another value is the fact that a text robot can generate large volumes of articles on a very granular level, like all real estate sales in every neighbourhood of the city a newsroom is covering. The decision to start testing content automation in some of the McClatchy newsrooms in 2021 followed “brainstorming to look at our gaps”, SVP Product & Experience Cynthia DuBose said at the time. “What content and topics were audiences looking for that we didn’t have?” The team realised that many of the topics driving new audience were information topics like real estate, high school sports, restaurant reviews – content the newsrooms did not have the manpower to cover. “We want our journalists to produce journalism, not track down information. They should focus on what they are skilled to do.”
What about the money? Some of the local news publishers we work with are focused purely on the traffic and pageviews generated by the automated articles. Some are testing putting the content behind a paywall, and it turns out critical information like constantly updated weather warnings can generate conversions. There are also examples of publishers using the hyperlocal content on e g real estate sales to launch newsletters – not to directly generate revenue, but as a service to retain subscribers.
We continue to work closely with our old and new US local media clients to develop new automated content products and to help them get the most out of the ones they are already using. We’re going to be in Chicago for the Local Media Association’s yearly LMA Fest Sep 23–25. Do get in touch if you’d like to meet us there to learn more!