What we’re talking about: the latest about news automation

Most of the small local news publishers our team at United Robots talk to in the US battle one common problem. Their newsrooms do not have the resources to produce all the unique local content their readers expect. The two topics that most often come up as underreported are high school sports and real estate. Here, we're going to focus on the latter, and explain how content automation can help underresourced local newsrooms get a thriving real estate section off the ground.

We're happy to announce that in the US market we're now working with PropMix – a collaboration that enables media companies to deliver hyper local real estate articles containing sales and market insights. The partnership means we're able to provide highly relevant and timely real estate news stories for local media companies to attract readers – based on top quality data from a renowned provider.

Next week – Tuesday Feb 8 – INMA is hosting their first ever workshop focused on content automation. The event is part of the Media Subscription Summit, and we're happy to announce that two of our successful publisher partners will be sharing insights and answer questions. 

Robot journalism supports a growing number of local newsrooms. One of the best in class is Bergens Tidende in Norway, who was awarded three 2021 INMA Global Media Awards silver places for its Home Sales website section, entirely populated with robot generated content. Over the past year it has generated more than 1 mi pageviews, and is now driving 5% of all BT’s article conversions of paying subscribers. 

We're thrilled to announce that US local media group McClatchy have signed an agreement with us for a pilot partnership to deliver automated news about home sales in Sacramento County, CA. The pilot, which is live as of early September, includes automatically generated stories about individual sales as well as aggregated articles on aspects such as median or average price, and top lists of most expensive homes sold during given periods for given areas or neighborhoods.

The beauty of robots as reporters is that they can sift through and analyse huge amounts of data and then churn out digestible pieces of content, quickly, efficiently and consistently.
Our newest robot tackles the cumbersome task of turning companies' annual reports into short, readable articles and visuals.

OK, that's a slight simplification. But the fact is that Bergens Tidende's new Home Sales vertical – entirely populated with robot written articles – has been nominated in the category Best Subscription or Membership Product in the 2021 Digiday Media Awards Europe. 

The collaboration between Norwegian publisher Bergens Tidende (Schibsted) and United Robots around automated real estate content – a huge reader revenue success – has now generated nominations in 3 categories of the 2021 INMA Global Media Awards. Five percent of all article conversions at BT now happen through the real estate articles.

This week, regional title Fædrelandsvennen, part of Polaris Media group, in Kristiansand in southern Norway, has unveiled its brand new Home Sales section, where they publish automated real estate articles about sales in a number of municipalities in Agder county. The publisher's launch included an explanatory article about the new Robot journalist working for them, who retrieves the data, calculates price per square meter, compares it to other homes in the area and writes the text. The articles include Google streetview images of the properties as well as maps and aerial photos with a street address label.

Swedish local media group Gota Media use automated real estate articles as part of their reader revenue strategy. With a conversion rate of 2%, the Real Estate Robot is currently the best converting byline across the group's ten news sites.