Startup to offer native advertising opportunities, forgoing display ads altogether
A Toronto-based media startup is looking to elevate the conversation about news. Newsana, which opens public beta testing on April 9, is a social network for news junkies that curates the highest quality content possible, as voted on by its users.
The members-only site is a response to other popular news aggregators, like Reddit, where viral videos and memes reign supreme. The site’s co-founder Ben Peterson, who previously co-founded Journalists For Human Rights in 2002, said the idea of Newsana is to provide more serious, well-researched content than other social news sites.
“The problem with Reddit and many other sites is that the quality of content gets degraded over time,” he said. “We want to create a community with higher standards where the best quality content, the most essential stories, rise to the top instead of College Humour or lolcats.”
To maintain a high level of discourse, Newsana is screening users and only approving those who have used social media “for good” in the past. Members submit news stories for inclusion on the site, and are rated on areas of expertise in topics such as gender and feminism, creative technology and Canadian politics. Users then vote on whether that story is “essential,” creating a list of ranked stories for each topic. Votes from high-ranking members carry more weight.
At launch, Newsana will not be ad supported, but Peterson said the company will introduce a native advertising program once the community grows to a larger size. Instead of banner ads, Peterson said Newsana will focus on branded content in an effort to provide ads that complement the site’s quality-driven concept and provide a benefit to the audience.
“Instead of having a banner ad from IBM, we’d hope to have the top 5 stories on innovation by IBM, or something of the sort,” he said. “For a site like ours, that type of content is beneficial to our audience because the content, if it’s good content, will be read and will be of interest to our members.”
Peterson expects Newsana to develop some branded content in-house on behalf of advertisers, while he said other content is likely to come from brand’s marketing teams or agencies. The branded content will be marked as sponsored content, but it will appear in Newsana’s main feed alongside news content, much like the branded content model popularized by Buzz Media in the U.S.
Founded in January 2012, Newsana received $500,000 in funding from a group of high profile investors including CEO of Fairfax Financial and RIM independent director Prem Watsa and Gary Slaight, president and CEO of Slaight Communications.
