Developing the formula for SCMP’s latest data-driven product, Abacus

By Scott M. Scher, Columbia University

Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post’s mission is to lead the global conversation on China. Lee opened with an anecdote about the ability of sensationalism to attract customers’ attention, and how attention has driven product creation within media.

Using AI and Machine Learning the South China Morning Post is developing audience-first best practices. This includes focusing on the Attention Economy, the media model, audience fragmentation, evolving with data, user studies, surveys, behavior tracking, triggers, and demographic studies.

Lee said that data should drive every aspect of business. This is not just the editorial, marketing, and advertising aspects, but also, human resources, product, and public relations. On the advertising side they use a data management platform to build a niche premium audience to better serve advertisers with who their audience is. In marketing they are optimizing customer acquisition for those they know are loyal to read their brand. All around the office they are using KPIs and TV dashboards to enhance the everyday conversation around product development.

This has lead them to release two new products for the US market, Abacus, which “unpacks China” the idea is that with the advent of China becoming a forefront of technology and leadership only second to the US and there is not much coverage of this area. They want to provide reviews for phones, drones, devices, and all things tech in China. This includes profiles on people and companies like the giants Alibaba and Baidu, as well as startups. This is all based mobile web but has an “app like feel”. They have found that users engage much better with applications but are unlikely to download new apps, so they decided to create a website that looks and feels like an app.

The second product they launched is called Inkstone. A daily curated China brief, detailing economics, politics, and technology which allows a user to read everything they need to know on China in ten minutes or less each day. This is targeting their global curious reader and has “gamifyed” this product by providing what Korey called “a one timer” an extra Easter egg article after a user has read all of its five provided articles. Since this is a daily brief they have added a countdown clock until the release of the next brief and will send a push notification to its subscribers when it is ready.