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The Di5ru.pt blog

Joris van Lierop, CEO, The Content Exchange

Joris van Lierop, CEO, The Content Exchange will be at the World Media Congress in Cascais, Portugal, from 7-9 June. Below, he answers five quick-fire questions ahead of the conference.

For more on Congress, to register and learn about networking opportunities with media, tech and other industry leaders, go to fippcongress.com.

Tell us about your business

The Content Exchange is a digital platform where publishers can directly license content from each other. It is an efficient way for any publishing company to offer content for licensing to a global market, or to license content directly from other quality brands and editorial teams. TCE takes care of distribution, translation, rights and payments. This way we support a global network of publishers that work together and create more value for great stories.

Tell us about your role in the business

I am the founder and CEO of The Content Exchange. I take care that our development, marketing, content and business development activities are all supportive to our clients’ needs. As a company, we started in the Covid pandemic and learned how important it is to stay aligned, work hard and celebrate together. As a team, we embrace a culture that is fair, fun and highly ambitious. We believe in building success together with our clients. Each new story exchanged means new value for a reader, a publisher and a creator. That is always driving us.

What do you see as the three main challenges for media?

  • War for attention: There are many platforms that fight for the time and mind space of the user. How to stand out and keep your audience engaged and loyal? Developing strong brands and a continuous high-quality content offering are a big part for being successful in this.
  • Create Level Playing Field: The last few years publishers are regaining ground, taken by the big global players. Still, in many cases publishers tend to partner more with these players instead of working together. Content gets shared with Youtube, Facebook, TikTok, Google and Apple, making it possible for these platforms to absorb huge amounts of customer attention, data and advertisers money. Creating strong partnerships between publishers and editorial teams will provide opportunities to scale together and provide each other with the same opportunities.
  • Diversification: The digital age started with advertising-driven models. The truth was that only a few platforms could turn this into profitable economies. During the last three years the major shift to subscription business takes place. A big improvement in the business model, delivering a strong foundation for new growth. However, also the subscription model will get to a new phase. Creating multiple business lines, based on the creation of superfans that just love your brand will be the big challenge to ensure sustainable growth.

What do you see as the three main opportunities for media?

  • We believe strongly in working together. Creating outstanding content takes expertise and time. Many creations will be an excellent addition to other publications. This allows editors to focus on specific expertise and working together with many other editorial teams with their own specific skills. This will amplify the editorial power of any team and make sure you engage your audience with the best possible offering. Especially in the digital age, the capability of delivering high-quality content on a continuous basis is key.
  • Editorial brands have the power to create an emotional connection with their audiences. Although billions of people use Google, not many of them will have an emotional connection with ‘search’ such as people have with their favorite book, magazine, movie, newspaper or influencer. The brand does not need to be identified with one single form of existence, like ‘print’ or ‘digital’, but can travel over many channels and create many new touchpoints with the fans. Whether this is podcast, live event, video, metaverse, ecommerce, TikTok or a Sunday morning newsletter, this all can be explored and will provide many new opportunities.
  • Subscription development is key for many media brands. To develop the relationship with the subscriber further, acting on known preferences and insights will improve loyalty and diminish churn. Being able to deliver based on an individual profile makes platforms like Youtube and TikTok so strong and keeps users extremely loyal. Publishers will improve in this field as well, based on intimate consumer knowledge, adopting AI for making insights operational and by delivering the best possible content for an optimal and personal experience.

Why should people meet with you at the Congress?

We deliver the immediate opportunity to improve your net result by connecting you to our fast growing network or publishers. We provide you with a personal digital dashboard with all content fitting your publishing needs. You can work with us directly on the spot. Together we also make the arrangements to onboard your content and make it available to our global network. And of course, next to all this work, it will be great to connect, exchange ideas, experiences and views and we’ll make sure you never leave us without a smile.

For more on Congress, to register and learn about networking opportunities with media, tech and other industry leaders, go to fippcongress.com.