TORONTO, June 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sophi.io, The Globe and Mail’s artificial intelligence-powered optimization and prediction platform, was announced as a winner of the International News Media Association (INMA) Global Media Awards in two categories, Best Use of Data to Automate or Personalize, and Best in Show for North America.
“The INMA Global Media Awards focus on excellence across all areas of the media business,” said Phillip Crawley, Publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail. “I’m particularly pleased that Sophi’s fully dynamic, real-time, personalized paywall won in two categories, and that Sophi’s ground-breaking automated print laydown technology was nominated for its use with Naviga and Agderposten.”
Sophi also took second place in the categories of Best Initiative to Acquire Subscribers and Best Use of Data to Drive Subscriptions, Content, or Product Design and was shortlisted as a finalist in the following categories: Best Initiative to Register Users, and Best Product and Tech Innovation.
This year’s competition drew 644 entries from 212 news brands in 37 countries. The judges were 44 global media experts focused on breakthrough results, unique concepts, strong creativity, innovative thinking, and winner synergies across platforms.
“Great use of data with huge impact. Personalizing paywalls is key for success in the digital subscription business for news media. This entry presents more evidence why this is true,” one judge said about the paywall technology. “Their development of user- and content-propensity models is a best practice that others can learn from,” said another judge.
Another judge remarked: “Incredible Artificial Intelligence-driven personalization, and perfect embracing of the need to insert data-science talent into a news organization. Excellent impact and numbers.”
Sophi’s fully dynamic, personalized, real-time paywall uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze both content and user behaviour to determine when to ask a reader for money or an email address, and when to leave them alone. It can optimize for multiple outcomes simultaneously (such as different bundles or price points) and also works well in cold-start situations.
Sophi is an AI platform that helps publishers identify their most valuable content and leverage it to achieve key business goals, such as maximizing subscriptions. Publishers on four continents now use Sophi’s AI/ML technology to power paywall decisions, website automation and print automation.
Sophi’s automated print laydown solution, which powers Naviga Publisher, earned an honourable mention in the Best Product and Tech Innovation category. An INMA judge commented: “Sophi – as the first of its kind – is a great example of an automated print laydown solution. Amazing to see that the work of the editor is reduced only to the selection of the content. The automation of up to 80% of newspapers’ editorial pages could be a game-changer of the print industry.”
Last year, Sophi also won the Online Journalism Award (OJA) for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism, handed out by the Online News Association (ONA), and both the World Digital Media Award and the North American Digital Media Award awarded by The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in the category of Best Digital News Start-up.
About Sophi.io
Sophi.io (https://www.sophi.io) was developed by The Globe and Mail to help content publishers make important strategic and tactical decisions. It is a suite of AI and ML-powered optimization and prediction tools that includes Sophi Site Automation and Sophi Dynamic Paywall as well as Sophi Analytics, a decision-support system for content publishers. Sophi is designed to improve the metrics that matter most to your business, such as subscriber retention and acquisition, engagement, recency, frequency and volume.
Media Contact Jamie Rubenovitch Head of Marketing, Sophi The Globe and Mail 416-585-3355 jrubenovitch@globeandmail.com
