Evaluating the Challenge
The PDLN media evaluation seminar in Brussels on 26th March saw presentations from Infomedia, PMG, CFC and Belga, with ad hoc contributions from NLA, CLA, CEDRO, NLI, and APA. Dutch financial daily HFD joined as a guest. While all organisations are different, the common theme was accommodating user and publisher expectations on rights and revenue as evaluation services slowly absorb more of clients attention and budget.
The fact that the EU Parliament approved the DSM legislation at the same time as the seminar was highly relevant. In broad terms this says the availability of a licence and publishers clear statement of the fact they require one will together assert the publishers’ rights to require agreement before data is used. So any uncertainty over whether the rights to create evaluation derivatives by using text and data mining rights are being resolved by the directive in publishers favour. Now is the time to create a specific mining and evaluation licence.
Infomedia – closer to an MMO than most PDLN members – started the session with a thoughtful presentation of how the changing service requirement drives changes in their publisher royalty model. Belga in particular see offering a text and data mining right as a way of broadening licence rights to create additional value, especially for ‘self service’clients – those not using an MMO- and for MMOs who are mostly on flat rate deals Paywall content is also extremely helpful in these negotiations. CFC are using data mining- initially of web content – as a basis for moving towards flat rate per client agreements with MMOs.
PMG see evaluation as a task of market education, with long lead times and limited client understanding of how to approach the DIY challenge in media analysis. The market is conservative, but growing. Both PMG and Infomedia confirmed the challenges of royalty attribution in a fixed price model. PMG use usage data, as do Infomedia, but as services develop the value of usage data will likely decline.
Positioning licensing initiatives in this area in the wider context of current or expected clippings volume falls was an issue for most. NLA and CLA recognise that simply identifying and defining the rights offered is missing from their current offerings. Like many other licensing bodies they want to ensure publishers benefit from the additional value extracted by new evaluation services.
Francois Gabai, CFC, describing the French approach
