Innocode of Norway – new R&D member leverages social media for digital revenue

Scandinavia is the home of thriving local media and a growing digital subscription base. LMA welcomes Innocode, an innovative developer of digital solutions for local newspapers, as a new R&D member.

Innocode was established in Oslo, Norway in 2011 by experienced media executives having personally experienced how social media and other Internet giants increasingly besieged a once thriving Norwegian local media market. Print was dropping like a rock, digital gains could not nearly make up the difference in lost subscription revenue, while advertisers were fleeing to Facebook, Google, and later Instagram.

Innocode’s founders decided to build an extensive platform with services that would enable newspapers to reassert themselves as community information hubs, and develop new sources of revenue by leveraging the very social media companies that were in the process of displacing them. Eight years later Innocode has developed an extensive platform and a growing portfolio of proven products focused on commercial and editorial digital success.

Over the same period, local newspapers have finally found their digital “mojo”. In 2018, 85 percent of Norway’s local newspapers increased their subscription numbers, and profitability is once again on the upswing.

Innocode’s approach is all about accessing, filtering and repurposing social media content for publication on newspaper websites and apps. The company’s commercial products give stores, other local advertisers, citizens and organizations increased exposure, while editorial products provide a steady stream of new, locally relevant content. Ever smaller newsrooms get easy access to new story ideas that can be developed and published.

Today, Innocode’s products are used by more than 70 Scandinavian newspaper titles, including Schibsted and Polaris, two of Norway’s three largest newspaper publishers. The products have also been introduced in the U.S., where they are currently used by more than 20 local newspaper titles.

Please join Innocode at Mega-Conference 2019! Booth 708 in the exhibit hall.