Daniel Butler, CEO of Socius, on how publishers can monetise user generated content

Over the past few years there has been an explosion in the number, and indeed the quality, of European based media startups. Many of them have attended the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin (<link no_cache dis-register>click here to get reduced rate tickets for the 2017 event) sharing their visions with both fellow entrepreneurs and senior execs from established publishing companies.

Socius might just be one of the most intriguing new European media startups to emerge in a long while.

The company, which has offices in both Europe and the US, recently raised $400k from 500 Startups‘ Nordic Fund and Raa Invest and hopes to use that warchest to fill the space between publishers and user generated content. It delivers not just an intriguing platform for media brands to experiment with, it could potentially offer companies the opportunity to monetise the user generated content that they harness.

In the last twelve months Socius has agreed a series of partnerships, the most high profile of which was with publishing colossus Condé Nast. It has however also worked with promising startup Peerspace (imagine an Airbnb for company offices and meetings) as well as local platforms in Berlin and London and the much acclaimed Australian singer songwriter Courtney Barnett.

For most of its clients it delivers an easy to operate solution which curates key content - it doesn't have to be user-generated - and delivers it in an attractive grid format. Native advertising is embedded in a smart and unobtrusive way among the rest of the content.

The company prides itself on being supreme curators of viral content and to illustrate this recently launched an automated puppy news generator. Once the widget embedded into a site it identifies the best quality puppy content from across the social web and packages it into a fully interactive dynamic widget. The company explains that it is a tongue in cheek add on for news companies - which helps enable their journalists get on with writing important news stories and not chasing pet-related clickbait.

We recently caught up with company CEO Daniel Butler, who explains how Socius works and why user generated content could prove to be a potential goldmine for media brands.

What inspired you to come up with Socius?

We are lovers of social media as it's so personal and interactive but felt that the full story was often lost by the siloing of content within each network and the format constraints. Our prototype was FacesofNYFW.com the online experience of New York Fashion Week  curating over a million posts into a gorgeous social hub. It was quickly picked up and shared by fashion icons including Cara Delevingne, Michael Kors and Victoria Beckham and it was then Axel Springer invited us to join their accelerator program in Berlin to build the scalable platform.

Why do you think harnessing UGC is so tricky for media brands? How does Socius solve this problem?

There's so much noise on social that identifying the best content is very time consuming. Secondly, big brands often have their hashtags polluted with spam and competitor brands vying for attention. With Socius they can get to the best stuff and have full control over how they want to present their story.

Do you see yourself as mainly a vehicle for publishers, or one for brands?

We don't really see a difference: Modern brands are publishers, they have stories to tell and it's about promoting the lifestyle and their brand tribes rather than sales messages that Y gen consumers simply block. However, many brands can benefit by teaming up with traditional publishers as they have larger stages to present and are adept at crafting stories, which is why we have seen more requests coming through the internal commercial content agencies of the publishing houses like 23 Stories at Condé Nast.

Explain your monetisation options? How do you incorporate the native advertising?

We charge a tiered monthly license for our platform based on the number and complexity of the integrations. Native ads are all handled by the customer and they currently net 100% of the revenue from these. Since the native ads are loaded through our platform and not a typical ad server Socius avoids most common ad blockers making them up to 30% more visible.

Many of the themes Daniel discusses in this article will feature prominently at the 2017 Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin. For more information and a pre-agenda booking rate that can save delegates 600 Euros, <link no_cache dis-register>click here.