Hey, Get Your Own Content!

Not too long ago, a colleague of mine and I got into spirited debate about content ownership—specifically, what are the parameters around a third party using a brand’s copyrighted content. The subject came up after I noticed that a B2B trade publication had re-printed an infographic I had published for Nielsen just a few days earlier.

 When content producers are interested in sharing someone else’s work, web best practices allow the third party to take a small portion from the original content and drop in a link to the source information in case interested visitors want to read more. Unfortunately, there is no formal definition of “fair use” in the U.S. Copyright Act. According to the University of North Carolina’s Web Publishing and Collaboration Guide, two prevalent guidelines prevail when it comes to fair use: 1) use 10% of the original and 2) not reproducing a “substantial amount,” which may be less than 10% in some cases.

 In this case, the trade publisher, clearly more interested in capitalizing on the visual value of the infographic than the accompanying text, republished everything. There may have been a link to the source material in the post, but since the publisher ran the entire post, there was really no reason for a visitor to click it. According to copyright and fair use information on Stanford’s website, some websites have been found guilty of copyright law because they used full-size images from another site—a process referred to as “inlining.”

 So here’s where the debate comes in.

 I was bothered by the blatant misappropriation of copyrighted content. My colleague, on the other hand, was happy to see that a trade publication thought highly enough of the post to use it. While there is certainly merit in having third-party sites republish a brand’s content, those endeavors are done through formal agreements and permissions.

 As a content producer, I know the value of good content. And believe me, good content has value. While countless marketers debate how to calculate the ROI of their efforts, I take great pride in knowing that insightful digital content is the primary driver of the massive visitation to http://www.nielsen.com each month. I’m also eager to share that great content. I’m not, however, usually open to having it re-printed in full somewhere else. Why? Because that defeats its primary purpose—drive website engagement and lead generation. When the content gets posted in full elsewhere—without permission—I lose the ability to drive web engagement.

 And our digital content strategy works. I took a look at some recent web metrics and found that traffic to www.nielsen.com over the past two years has more than doubled. The same is true for time on page. But the other critical element to our strategy is quality. Yes, we have the backing of a well-respected global brand. But we also adhere to some pretty rigid standards to ensure the output is insightful and meaningful. So it doesn’t surprise me that others want to leverage the content.

 And that demand means that we can broaden the scope of our brand well beyond our corporate website and social channels. But it doesn’t mean that it’s ok for just anyone to stop by, copy something that catches their eye and run it somewhere else. Sure, we’ll pitch our most engaging insights to media outlets with the hope that they’ll find them as interesting as we do and then share them with their readers. But you know what? When those media outlets pick up our content, they use reporters and editors to craft stories in THEIR voices. Can you imagine Ad Age or Business Insider running a story about Apple that was written by Apple? Of course not. It’s also important to point out that WE choose the media outlets we want to share with.

 While some would argue that exposure on third-party sites could be beneficial to the brand because of the publicity, I would counter that it’s often the opposite. When Nielsen began licensing its content two years ago, we created specific parameters that identified what type of brands and sites could be licensees. In the example involving the infographic, it’s absolutely conceivable that visitors of the B2B site could think there is a relationship between Nielsen and the B2B publisher. That’s something I’d like to avoid. Don’t see the integrity risk? What if the Ashley Madison website began leveraging blog content from televangelist Joel Osteen? That’s unlikely and utterly preposterous, but you get the point.

 Another point worth mentioning is that content is licensed for a fee. So when a third-party plays by the rules and seeks to leverage quality content by paying to do so, it becomes difficult to justify the cost to them if and when they see that others are using the content without paying for it.

 No, I can’t dedicate my time to patrolling the Internet looking for each and every instance of copyright abuse. Nor do I want to. But I do understand why the problem exists. Good content is in high demand—and it can have a powerful impact. So I hope you understand the rationale behind any messages you receive if you don’t play by the rules of fairness and web best practices.