Personalize content

The right approach to "selling"

At the AI ​​Summit in Bengaluru, India, held in mid-July, Nagaraj Nagabushanam, Vice President of Data and Analytics at The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, spoke about how the newspaper uses AI to increase engagement and retain readers.

Accordingly, The Hindu is using AI to help refine and develop content and services to attract specific audiences. One example of this is how they personalize some news articles. For instance, if there's a special article about the election, a news article will be created around that article to explain why it's important and why readers should read it.

Furthermore, The Hindu is also exploring ways to use AI to tailor content to specific audiences. For example, they have a business newspaper called Business Line. Nagabushanam notes that they have a significant readership of certified public accountants, so if needed, they can create a newsletter specifically targeted at that audience.

According to journalist Nguyen Hoang Nhat, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of VietnamPlus online newspaper, content personalization is receiving much attention from media organizations. It allows newsrooms to provide content that is deeply relevant to their target audience, helping to improve reader satisfaction and loyalty.

“We asked certified public accountants to select articles they liked, and then we fed that data into a model. This model then indicated that, out of the 800-900 scattered articles we published in the past week, these were the 25 most appealing to certified public accountants,” Nagabushanam said.

According to Chris Petitt, Marketing Director of Zephr, one of the leading digital subscription payment gateway companies, personalization is becoming a key factor in the success of news organizations.

According to the International News Media Association (INMA), a recent study showed that 77% of Gen Z (the generation most closely associated with mobile phones) believe it is crucial for B2C businesses to customize interactions, tailoring them to individual preferences. Therefore, newsrooms need to utilize AI to analyze massive amounts of data on reader behavior, preferences, and interests.

From the collected database, AI will come into play. “AI has the potential to revolutionize personalization by using algorithms to analyze large amounts of data and automatically make predictions about the type of content a particular user might be interested in, ” Petitt said.

Looking at The Hindu's approach and discussing digital transformation in Vietnamese journalism, Mr. Dong Manh Hung - Head of the Editorial Secretariat and Permanent Vice President of the VOV Journalists' Association - believes that, from a professional perspective, digital transformation must have a roadmap and be selective, not a haphazard approach of simply dumping all content and formats from existing media outlets onto the internet.

Currently, many media outlets are posting verbatim their published journalistic products, such as those from radio, print publications, and television, onto digital platforms and considering them digital content. This approach is inappropriate. Digital journalistic content needs to be edited, structured, or even completely rewritten to suit the digital audience, who need to access information from multiple perspectives and in flexible ways, tailored to their individual information access preferences.

"Digital transformation requires professionalism in organizing content production tailored to the specific characteristics of each media channel and platform. Before launching any media platform, each news agency undergoing digital transformation needs to understand the specific audience of that channel. This understanding will help them identify their target audience, select appropriate products, and find suitable approaches to 'sell' their content," said journalist Dong Manh Hung.

Personalization is becoming a goal for many Vietnamese media outlets.

Journalist Nguyen Hoang Nhat, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of VietnamPlus online newspaper, said that content personalization is receiving much attention in media organizations. It allows newsrooms to provide content that is deeply relevant to their target audience, helping to improve reader satisfaction and loyalty.

As one of the first to embrace technological trends, VietnamPlus has focused on applying artificial intelligence tools to collect, analyze, and personalize user data. Simultaneously, through chatbots that interact with readers, it understands their needs and provides content solutions tailored to its target audience, helping them quickly access the information they want instead of having to sift through a huge amount of news across various fields, thus shortening the time and effort required for readers to find information.

According to journalist Nguyen Hoang Nhat, VietnamPlus currently collects reader data through technology from Insider. Simply put, a reader interested in sports and technology will be dissatisfied if they open a news site and find it flooded with political or entertainment news, and vice versa. Therefore, personalization is the goal of many news organizations, through automated technology to customize news pages, newsletters, or news delivery services (web-push, mobile-push).

"But to succeed with this strategy, newsrooms need to understand who their readers are, and this is where data comes in. The most advanced personalization strategies require data from users," said journalist Hoang Nhat.

As one of the leading units in applying AI to journalism, journalist Nguyen Viet Hung - Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Thanh Nien Newspaper - shared that by launching the Smart Newspaper project, integrating artificial intelligence to read news on the website, Thanh Nien Newspaper has changed the way it receives user data, meeting information needs while saving time for readers. Thanks to this, according to the management team, the number of users of the smart newspaper feature has increased to nearly 16,000 accounts, and the level of interaction with AI is very high, at times reaching 15,000 user requests.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence technology is also being used by many other newsrooms in Vietnam as one of the supporting platforms in the digital transformation era: using virtual presenters for video news and podcasts, applying smart newsroom technology, automatically recommending news to readers based on their own behavior... This is a significant shift for the operation of revolutionary journalism, gradually becoming more proactive, flexible, and changing its approach, bringing effectiveness to communication activities.

Hoa Giang

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/ca-nhan-hoa-noi-dung--dich-den-cua-nhieu-co-quan-bao-chi-viet-nam-post305838.html