Wright’s Media is the world’s largest global content and awards licensing agency, representing hundreds of publishers throughout the USA and Europe.
They handle licensing for everything from accolades to logos to rights and permissions, as well as e-prints and reprints. Clients include Hearst, Condé Nast, Daily Mail, The Associated Press, NBCUniversal, and The New York Times.
Wright’s works with Vogue and Glamour on their Beauty Awards, Men’s Health on their Fitness Awards, and Condé Nast Traveller on their Readers’ Choice Awards.
Yet content licensing (as distinct from syndication) remains an untapped revenue stream for many publishers. Here Wright’s Media global chief revenue officer Michelle Myers answers Press Gazette’s questions.
How does Wright’s Media make money for publishers?
“Where we come in is after those awards lists are published, we reach out to the brands that are the winners and see if they are interested in using the awards badge or logo to use in their marketing and advertising efforts.
“It has become a very important part of brands’ marketing initiatives to have third-party endorsements from top editorial publications around the world to promote these wins.”
How profitable is awards and content licensing for publishers, and what is the size of the opportunity?
“It’s going to be the most profitable revenue that a publisher gets because we work on a royalty basis. They’re already creating the content as a service to their readers, so us coming in and licensing that content for them is, in most cases, about a 95% profit margin.
“All of that money is dropping directly to their bottom line.
“Within that, it really ranges based on the number of winners there are. So if there are 15 winners, it’s not going to be as much revenue because you’ll have a certain close rate versus maybe having a hundred winners and doing multiple lists a year.
“In the case of some of the bigger awards franchises, they have over 1,000 winners.
“A brand like Condé Nast Traveller picks thousands of hotels that win around the world. So it can scale up very nicely for publishers that have a strategic focus on awards and perhaps do multiple awards a year.
“You may have a brand that is a woman’s lifestyle brand that may do beauty awards, fitness awards, and they also may create travel awards for their readers. And so that may be up to 500 winners across three or four awards every year.
“Licensing content is incredibly profitable because when you hire a third-party agency like ours and you’re getting the royalties back as a publisher, there’s not a lot of work on the publishers end because we’re a full service agency handling everything from the sale to billing, invoicing, marketing and then really dropping the royalties in our publishers bank accounts after we get paid.
“Since we work on a royalties basis, there are no up-front costs. So there is really no risk in doing this if the content is there.”
But once someone has won an award, they are free to shout about it, aren’t they? How do you step in and make money out of that?
“We have a whole infringements team within our organisation that looks for infringements for all of our publishers.
“If someone is going to use your endorsement for commercial purposes to help their business, you need to be paid a licensing fee for that endorsement.
“We know the licences we’ve sold for our publishers, and when they see something that we haven’t sold, we reach out to that brand and let them know that they need a licence in place in order to use the logo.”
Is this just awards, or can publishers monetise other types of endorsement?
“For lifestyle publishers, we also create what we call catchall logos for their general content.
“It could be a listicle of The Top 15 Sunscreens for Spring as recommended by Cosmopolitan. That is not necessarily an award but part of a listicle or an Editor’s Pick. We will reach out to the 15 brands on that list and let them know they would be eligible for the Cosmo Loves catchall logo that we’ve created for Cosmopolitan.”
Where do you see the growth coming in the licensing space?
“We’ve really expanded our global footprint as marketers globally have recognised the power of third-party endorsements and earned media to enhance their marketing and advertising initiatives.
“I think there is a lot more opportunity for independent publishers, B2B publishers, and bigger mainstream publishers, particularly in the UK, who have not fully embraced licensing or even considered it as an additional revenue stream.
“And that’s one of the reasons I’m excited to be speaking to more UK publishers to educate them on this additional revenue stream using the content they’re already creating.”
How much money are we talking about?
“It can really vary depending on the power and recognition of the brand. So the brands that have household names tend to do better in the licensing space because the brands that are purchasing those accolade logos know that the consumers trust those brands.
“Licensing costs for badges can range really because it’s done based on usage. Is it UK only? Is it worldwide?
“We have very bespoke pricing that we go out with for each client, but it can range from $10,000 to $25,000 US dollars on average for the logo, but it depends on the usage.
“And then, in addition to the logo licensing, we have pull quotes. So, a brand may say Peloton is the best cardio equipment in the world. And Peloton just wants to use that phrase in their marketing rather than a badge.
“Pull quotes can range from $15,000 to in excess of $100,000, depending on the usage and the terms.”
Why should publishers pay royalties to an outside agency for this work rather than do it themselves and keep all the revenue?
“It is a very complicated business to do in-house, and that is why every major publisher outsources it and outsources it to us.
“If it were simple to do, they would do it in-house. It’s because we are dealing with content buyers who are not advertising buyers. We don’t work with ad agencies that are buying traditional digital or print media.
“We are dealing with specific people, whether it’s within organisations, the brand itself, or at content licensing agencies that specialise in this. Having been in business for over 20 years, we are real experts in doing this. Our sales team has a deep understanding of how to market the awards to brands that have won, and we have a team that focuses on keeping our database updated globally with content buyers around the world.
“So we have a specialisation that is like no other.”
You’ve talked a lot about opportunities for lifestyle publishers, but what about the opportunities for mainstream newsbrands?
“I think that there is a great opportunity. For the news organisations that we represent, we are handling rights and permissions for them, which is completely different from syndication.
“What we handle for The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post is the right and permission to use their content.
“It may be in an education journal or perhaps could be for use in a documentary. It may be a photograph a staff photographer took that is going to be republished in a book or a map. It could be for a feature film.
“We have a very big business doing that for publishers that are in the news media.”
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