SVP & Executive Producer
CNN Interactive
Interview with Cecilia Villanueva
Manager of Partner relations
Sales and Programming
CNN Interactive
Media Pool
Highlights:
No news organization can create all the content that it can benefit from. There are such obvious restrictions as the area of expertise, human and technological resources, timing, finances, etc. The idea of content acquisition and content partnerships has been widely employed on the CNN.com grounds. The benefit is obvious, when partners are carefully selected. The content acquired should compliment the already existing content and fit in the business model. The complimentaries play a substantial role in value component of any business model at several different points in time: from its inception to sustainability.
Currently, CNN.com has content partnerships with SportsIllustrated.com, EntertainmentWeekly.com, Business 2.0, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Magazine, Edmunds.com, CNN Money, People Magazine, MayoClinic.com, Fortune Magazine, CourtTV.com, FindLaw.com, BudgetTravelOnline.com, MedPage Today, CareerBuilder.com and CNN’s affiliate stations throughout the country.
The expertise and superior content that is brought by partners is used to emphasize the value of CNN.com’s own product. By attracting expert opinions, the dot-com’s product is reinforced as the leader in the news (entertainment, technology, health, etc.).
The benefit is mutual. While CNN takes advantage of additional content, the partners gain exposure to CNN.com’s 22 million uniques per month. In addition, every content deal is developed on a co-branded page and a link to “More information,” which goes straight to the partner site.
Partnership deals are carried out throughout the world due to the networks worldwide presence. In
No deal is the same. In 2005, CNN.com signed a deal with Yahoo! Inc. ABC News was also a part of this video content partnership, in which both news organizations were set to provide daily video feeds to Yahoo!
While Yahoo! is gaining reputable video content and shares the respectability of the abovementioned brands, it also makes profit by integrating CNN.com’s video content into the Yahoo! News section on a free and ad-supported platform.
On the consumer side, this partnership benefits the users by allowing them to access the inventory available on the Internet.
For CNN.com, the value of this agreement, is in the exposure to bigger online audiences, especially, since Yahoo! is on the list of dot-com’s major competitors on the Nielsen//NetRatings scale, even though it is only an aggregator.
The year of 2005 also brought the MedPage content partnership. CNN.com brings MedPage Today with its physician-reviewed, in-depth medical news to its more than 20 million unique visitors each month (including over 500,000 healthcare professionals).
"Our partnership with MedPage Today helps to enhance the delivery of top-quality content to CNN.com users," said Mitch Gelman, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer, CNN.com. "Our readers are highly engaged and appreciate in-depth reporting on stories they care about."
From the press release: “As part of the agreement, links to MedPage Today's contextually relevant medical news content will be available from CNN.com's health section. MedPage Today will also develop custom content for CNN.com, including two weekly columns: Medical Journal Roundup and Profiles in Medicine. MedPage Today will also feature links on its news website, www.MedPageToday.com, to CNN.com's health section, thereby providing its audience with better insight into the health news coverage by the mass media.”
Around September 2006, CNN.com added “The Onion” to the list of its content partners. “The Onion” is a known satiric news source on the Web and has a reputation of one of the nation's most popular humorous news publications and is all about parody, satire, sarcasm and mockery. One of the examples of their headlines as follows: "Schwarzenegger Campaign Running out of Movie-related Campaign Slogans."
With a weekly readership of over 2 million, The Onion’s BM is largely based on advertising revenue for both online and print editions. In addition to that, there is a book publishing business: Compilations of Onion’s articles are published as books and are available in bookstores nationwide. The latest one is called "The Onion Ad Nauseam, Volume 14."
Satire: Summer intern already forgotten
Under the terms of the partnership, CNN.com gives the Onion a prominent placement on the home page as well as on the U.S. section page and a co-branded environment with external links directly to The Onion’s Web site.
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