The reluctance to migrate ad dollars online has much to do with the unpredictability and extraordinarily fast-changing landscape of the Web. Advertisers are presented with an ever-increasing array of online ad mediums, which is constantly changing, in large part due to our content revolution.
With every aspect of the online content lifecycle evolving rapidly, it’s impossible to predict where advertising dollars, traffic, engagement and other factors are headed. Hundreds of companies are trying to change the way we create, discover, consume, share and store content. And this all affects the core of many industries, from advertising to entertainment to journalism.
While traditionalists question the true impact of our content revolution, innovators are busy at work trying to prove that new ways of making and dealing with content can disrupt industries and fundamentally change the way we do things. Below are five innovative companies trying to affect our content revolution – each one focusing on a specific stage of the content lifecycle: creation, discovery, consumption, sharing and storage.
1) Weebly - Content Creation
Weebly is a free website creation platform which provides those without any technical background or design skills the tools they need to create a professional looking website, blog or online store. Weebly offers several website creation plans including a freemium option for a basic website as well as a premium option with a host of professional features. While content creation platforms like Weebly simplify the website creation process, some criticize them for giving rise to identical looking drag-and-drop sites lacking in originality. Already, Weebly has helped launch over 15 million sites.
2) Taboola - Content Discovery
Taboola is one of the world’s leading content discovery platforms, serving three billion daily recommendations to over 300 million monthly visitors. Taboola recommends articles and videos that are likely to be of interest to content consumers at publishers including USA Today, TMZ, The New York Times and Huffington Post. The company helps users discover new content while enabling publishers to increase traffic and generate revenue by displaying sponsored content. Taboola takes a novel approach amongst content recommendation engines by seeking to democratize and put users in control of suggested content.
3) Kaltura - Content Consumption
Kaltura is an open-source video platform used by 300,000 enterprises, universities, media companies and other sites that broadcast millions of videos to hundreds of millions of end-users. The software has been developed by a community of over 50,000 developers and is used by leading content sites like Wikipedia.com, HBO, Warner Bros. and
4) Pheed - Content Sharing
Pheed is a multimedia social network for creating and sharing text, photos, videos, audio tracks as well as live broadcasts. Users have the option to monetize the content they share by either charging a subscription fee or per view fee for live broadcasts. The newly launched mobile app has been growing rapidly and has already made it to the top slot of the social free apps category on the App Store. With a focus on the high school demographic (perhaps the most content-sharing segment of our society), Pheed seems to be onto something with its focus on rich media and young consumers.
5) Box - Content Storage
Box is a cloud-based platform which aims to make it easier for enterprises and individuals to share, access and manage content from anywhere. The platform replaces a need for other services like YouSendIt and Dropbox by offering a secure and efficient alternative. Box's offering also includes a document editor, which makes it easier for colleagues to work and edit the same document simultaneously. The service is being used by about 180,000 businesses and 20 million people.
Time will tell whether these and other content-related companies will continue to revolutionize industries and move ad dollars. What is certain, however, is that ad executives, journalists, entertainers and everyone dealing with content must remain wide-eyed and constantly open to change – otherwise they will get left behind.
