The editorial analytics systems SmartOcto and Content Insights claim to have found the holy grail in the news industry: a direct route from insights to profit. The companies regard the results of their joint efforts on the groundbreaking Value+ project so powerful that they decided to merge. As the new company ‘smartocto’ they will take their unique solution to more newsrooms in the world, backed by a consortium of prominent investors.
The Value+ project
Insights based on data are key to success for today’s newsrooms. But getting the right data actionable in order to deliver real value has always been a problem.
The 2019 Value+ project was designed to crack that puzzle. CEO of smartocto, Erik van Heeswijk: “Our solution is based on two radical new elements: using the right mix of historical data to accurately calculate the real value of articles, and an accurate and personal alert system that lets the right people know what to do with new content.” Roy Wassink, Insights Manager at the prominent Dutch/Belgian publisher, DPG media, confirms the success: “Results, conversions to subscriptions and overall reach have been groundbreaking - even in Corona times. Smartocto is very important, both for our journalists, and the data driven approach of our newsroom in general.”
Dejan Nikolic, CEO of Content Insights: “It’s special: we heard over and over again from our customers that merged together we would become the ultimate solution for every newsroom. And when the market tells you something, you listen.”
SmartOcto and Content Insights
The new approach is based on joint experiences of SmartOcto and Content Insights, the two most prominent editorial analytic systems on the European media market. Content Insights helps more than 150 media brands on 4 continents with in-depth daily historical analysis of content. SmartOcto assists over 50 prominent newsrooms with real-time graphs and data collection. The unique algorithms calculate the best scenario for every story and serve notifications based on various journalistic and business models. These two companies worked together for 2 years combining the most valuable data and decision making with artificial intelligence, to create the Story Value Engine©.
Funding in merged company: smartocto
A consortium of well known investors, North Base Media (NBM), Eleven, Neveq, V-Ventures and South Central Ventures (SCV) recognised that a merger of these companies would be a powerful proposition to the challenges facing the media industry, and decided to invest. Under the name smartocto, based in The Netherlands and Serbia, the team will scale operations in 2020.
Jan Kobler, Managing Partner at SCV: “We believe that this new proposition will be a major change to the world of media analytics. In the years to come, profitability of media will be more important than ever.”
Saša Vučinić, Managing Partner at NBM: “We think that the merged company, with its unique combination of proven expertise and approach, will set a new gold standard in content analytics. No other analytics company currently on the market can provide to its clients such depth of data together with live advice as smartocto can."
About smartocto: the company is the combination of two former startups. Both Content Insights (Serbia) and SmartOcto (the Netherlands) were founded in 2015. They now hold 3 offices: in the Netherlands, Serbia and USA. Together they support over 200 large media & news brands in more than 15 countries in the world. Companies like DPG media, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Metro.co.uk, NU.nl (to name a few) are highly satisfied customers of their services. The unique smart notifications and Story Value Engine© they have developed over the last two years make them unique in the market. With this state-of-the-art solution smartocto is able to turn editorial effort into profitability.