News automation: The publishers’ treasure trove

What do readers have a right to expect from their local news publisher? This question of course has a lot of answers – from quality journalism to a useful UX. What I’d like to focus on here is something we at United Robots often discuss with our publisher clients; the importance of providing unique local content. Or – from the reader’s point of view – having access to a local news site that is the hub of local journalism and information that you can’t easily find anywhere else. The content that defines the community you live in.

Imagine publishing an article every time a house is sold in any of the neighborhoods you cover. Complete with images and satellite maps. With robots in the newsroom, generating this volume of content is not an issue. And suddenly, you can reach individual readers in local communities with stories relevant just to them. Here, we’ll look at how this logic is helping news publishers drive journalism and business effects today.

In the 12 months October 2018–October 2019, the property bot generated 61,800 articles for Bostadspuls (automatically published). The CPM levels for this Home Sales premium advertising environment is around 20% higher than the average Mittmedia CPMs.

With the real estate bot, the average number of articles (per local site) increased from 2/month to 480/week. The volume of articles as well as the volume of logged-in pageviews increased, thus driving engagement and retention.

Oct 2018–Oct 2019 Mittmedia's automated real estate articles generated 7.4 mi logged-in pageviews (17.6 mi pageviews in total) and some 900 subscription sales.