Category: Featured News

Viafoura Launches New Audience Engagement Suite to Power Live Story Coverage and Real-time Conversations for Media Companies

Viafoura – a leading provider of engagement cloud solutions specifically built for news publishers and media companies – today announced the launch of Conversations.

Toronto, August 2, 2018: Viafoura – a leading provider of engagement cloud solutions specifically built for news publishers and media companies – today announced the launch of Conversations. Building on their leading real-time commenting platform, Viafoura Conversations provides, a complete set of real-time tools and capabilities to help media companies and journalists connect with their audience directly on their site and mobile applications. Backed by a leading AI moderation solution, journalists and audiences alike, are free of the worry of trolls and hate speech and can participate in real-time conversations not only in the comments, but in live chat forums and as part of the live blogging experience, now provided by the Viafoura Conversation suite.

“The audience experience, interactions and resulting first party data belong in the hands of the content creators and at Viafoura, we are committed to ensuring that happens in fully automated moderation environments free of hate speech, harassment and abuse.”
— Jesse Moneifar, CEO, Viafoura

Viafoura Conversations provides media companies with the tools they need to offer live story coverage and enable real-time conversations through commenting, live chat and more –all directly on their sites. Highlights of the suite, part of the market-leading Viafoura Engagement Cloud, include:

Live Stories

Enable real-time coverage of stories and events by publishing a live stream of content directly on site and include external links and embedded social posts with ease. Live Stories lets journalists cover stories as they happen and ensures users stay up to date on breaking news and can join the conversation in real-time.

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Viafoura Live Stories - Rich Text Capabilities

Live Chat

Provide registered users and subscribers a forum to connect around topics and events directly on your site with the real-time protection of Viafoura Automated Moderation.

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Real-Time Commenting

Enhances audience engagement by allowing real-time conversations to unfold directly on site, creating a highly engaged community of authors, readers, influencers and subscribers that’s backed by Viafoura Automated Moderation to guarantee brand safety.

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Viafoura Real-Time Commenting

Ratings & Reviews

Offers a five-star system that lets users react to the experiences, places and products they encounter.

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Viafoura Ratings & Reviews

All Viafoura Conversations products come with a guaranteed uptime of 99.95% and native ads-in-comments functionality.

“Leading media brands understand the importance of connecting directly with their audience and looking for tools that make it easy for journalists to provide live story coverage and interact with their audience in a safe environment.”
— Allison Munro, Head of Sales and Marketing, Viafoura

“And with the many challenges on social platforms, from algorithm changes to user data breach and scandals, to fake news, trolls and harassment, it’s important now, more than ever that media companies can control their user experience and build their audience relationship on their owned channels.” Munro, continues.

The Viafoura Engagement Cloud is used by over 600 media brands globally, including CBC, Advance Media, Graham Media, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Irish Times, and The Weather Network.

About Viafoura

Viafoura helps over 600 media, broadcast and entertainment brands better build, manage and monetize their content, audience and data in real time, powering more than 1.5 billion interactions across 350 million active users.

Philadelphia Media Network Taps Viafoura as Critical Technology Partner to Create a Brand Safe and Civil Community

Investing in fostering a civil community, Philadelphia Media Network deploys next-generation moderation and engagement tools

Viafoura, a leader in real-time audience engagement and moderation solutions for media companies, announces it has been chosen by Philadelphia Media Network: Philly.com, the online hub for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, to provide real-time engagement and automated moderation solutions to power their online community. Viafoura Automated Moderation uses machine learning and natural language processing to augment human moderation efforts to remove spam, harassment, personal attacks and other intolerable user generated content in real time. Combined with the Viafoura suite of engagement tools, Philly.com will create a more productive, civil and growing community for its readers and journalists to connect around the issues that matter most.

“In order to build a healthy online community, we need to invest in it. We want community management tools which allow our audience to build strong relationships with our community team, our reporters and each other,” said Kim Fox, Managing Editor, Audience Development at Philly.com. “You get the community you deserve, you need to invest in it, so we are happy to have found a platform with moderation and engagement tools that will build trust and encourage quality conversation and relationships. We’re thrilled that Viafoura is as committed to our success as we are.”

In order to build a healthy online community, we need to invest in it.

The selection marks a change from Philly.com’s unpaid use of Disqus to an investment in the publication’s online community, and an increased effort to encourage engaging, productive discourse. Viafoura’s real-time engagement and moderation suite will power real-time conversations and uphold Philly.com’s community guidelines consistently across its site in order to improve the quality of comments and increase audience engagement.

Related: The Virginian-Pilot Empowers Readers and the Newsroom

About Philadelphia Media Network, PMN

Philadelphia Media Network, PBC, (PMN) is the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. With its multiple brand platforms and integrated print and digital products, PMN is the region’s largest news media network and the industry’s technological leader and innovator. PMN reaches an average weekly audience of 1.9 million adults – more than the combination of the four evening television news shows* or the combination of those radio stations** ranked in the top ten during drive-time programming.

Interested in learning more?

Connect with us today to learn how Viafoura can help you build, manage and monetize your audience.

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Source: Scarborough Release 2 2017; Base: Philadelphia DMA
*The evening news television is ranked from the weekly primetime average half hour M-F 5pm – 7pm; M-F 11pm-11:30pm **Radio is ranked from the weekly primetime average quarter hour M-F 6am – 10am

Advance Local selects Viafoura to power engagement and moderation

Advance Local selects Viafoura to power engagement and moderation across its network of sites.

Advance Local LogoSpanning the full network of Advance Local, Viafoura will power and moderate online engagement for regional websites owned by the media company.

Specifically, Viafoura will provide real-time commenting and full service moderation in order to increase the quality of user-generated content, journalist and audience interactions and the online user experience.

“We look forward to supporting Advance Local’s commitment to quality interactions and civil discourse across its network of sites,” said Jesse Moneifar, founder and CEO of Viafoura. “We’re proud to aid in Advance’s efforts to provide an environment that facilitates discussion around the topics that are most important to the members of their community.”

About Viafoura

Servicing over 600 top media, broadcast and entertainment brands worldwide, Viafoura allows content providers to better build, manage and monetize their content, audience and data in real time. Market-leading cloud engagement solutions empower organizations to provide an integrated and seamless online user experience, while fueling better interactions with their audience and providing the first-party data crucial to business success.

Related: The Virginian-Pilot Empowers Readers and the Newsroom

Are you ready to engage your audience?

Connect with us today to learn how Viafoura can help you build, manage and monetize your audience.

Talk to Sales

Digital Engagement and Adapting to Change

Viafoura’s Director of Product – Engagement Tools, Dan Seaman joined Shari Medini on the Push Pull Sales & Marketing podcast, where they discussed the importance of adapting to changing traditional and social media landscapes in order to maintain and increase engagement.

Topics in the podcast:

  • The effects of how quality content distribution is often reliant on one or two social media and search engine giants
  • The importance of the relationships you build with your audiences
  • How building these quality relationships, whether you’re a large publisher or smaller content creator, will help drive engagement regardless of changes to platforms or algorithms

Adapting to change as a content publisher with Dan Seaman (ep. 61)

Director of Product
Dan Seaman

Dan Seaman is a 15 year digital media professional and enthusiast and has held key product strategy and leadership roles managing consumer products for large media groups like St. Joseph Media, Quebecor, TC Media, and The Globe and Mail.

Pelmorex Selects Viafoura to Bring Commenting Back to The Weather Network

Pelmorex Media Inc. owns some of the most popular weather-forecasting websites, apps, and television networks, including The Weather Network and MétéoMédia. With millions of weekly users, their websites faced unwanted trolling that has traditionally been too time-consuming and costly to manage with moderators.

As a result, they eliminated the comment section altogether. But knowing the impact that commenting has on audiences, content creation, pageviews and attention time, the team at Pelmorex was committed to finding a solution that would allow them to bring commenting back.

“We are extremely proud at The Weather Network and MétéoMédia to now be able to offer a safer place for weather enthusiasts to connect and share their love of nature and the environment.”
—Head of Digital, Pelmorex

Keep Your Brand and Users Safe with Automated Moderation

One of tools they employed on The Weather Network and MétéoMédia is Viafoura Automated Moderation, which uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to automatically categorize and eliminate trolling, spam and online harassment. This technology is programmed with over 6 million variations of every word, so it is able to determine the subject matter and the sentiment behind words and phrases written by users.

If the system encounters a new word or sentence that it is unsure of, it flags the instance for a moderator to review. As a moderator approves or rejects new words, through the power of machine learning, the algorithm learns new rules and gets smarter over time.

Pelmorex and their users will benefit from other community moderation tools, such as flagging, user muting and the dislike button. User muting will allow users to personalize their experience by avoiding unwanted communications from certain members. The dislike button will allow users to express their dislike for a comment, without having to flag a comment (which requires a moderator’s time and resources).

Increase Pageviews and Attention Time with Engagement Tools

Their users will also have increased opportunities to engage with the content on The Weather Network and MétéoMédia, with follow features, real-time commenting and user profiles. These engagement tools are designed to give users the quickest and easiest way to interact with one another and with website content, thereby increasing their interest, pageviews and attention time.

  • Commenting: Users can add comments, images and videos to the comment section in real time; users can easily share their favorite comments to social media
  • User Profiles: Users can create an identity on their websites by adding their information, interests, custom name and avatar
  • Follow Features & Notification Feed: Users can follow their favourite community members, authors and sections to never miss an update in their Notification Feed
  • Browser-Based Push Notifications: Allows their websites to deliver timely weather alerts even when users are off-site
  • Social Share Bar: Customizable share bar that allows users to share articles in seconds
  • Community Moderation: Moderators can give timed user bans and set flagging thresholds; users can dislike and flag comments and mute other users
  • Automated Moderation: Detects and eliminates spam, foul language, abuse, personal attacks, and other uncivil comments on websites and on social media
  • Audience Insights: Captures the impact of engagement on metrics like pageviews, attention time and loyalty in real time

Pelmorex’ Head of Digital, Carrie Lysenko, is excited to offer new functionality and value to encourage more users to register and engage with their brands. She adds, “We are extremely proud at The Weather Network and MétéoMédia to now be able to offer a safer place for weather enthusiasts to connect and share their love of nature and the environment.”

Interested in learning more?

Connect with us today to learn how Viafoura can help you build, manage and monetize your audience.

Connect Now

Meet Viafoura at INMA World Congress

Meet Viafoura at INMA World Congress

INMA World Congress of News Media

We’re excited to be heading to INMA World Congress 2017 to meet with the world’s leading news media organizations. The conference takes place at TheTimesCenter in New York City from Sunday, May 21st to Wednesday, May 23rd.

This year includes a dazzling welcome reception in the Museum of Modern Art, case studies from international peers, and presentations on audience and revenue growth from which to benchmark your efforts.

Viafoura in the Big Apple

We’ll be there in booth #3 talking about the Viafoura Viafoura Engagement Cloud that helps 600 brands like Hearst, GateHouse Media and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to engage, discover, and grow their audiences.

If you’re attending, stop by our booth to grab some Viafoura goodies and learn how our platform is changing the way media organizations build and monetize their audiences.

Book time with us to chat 1:1 about the Viafoura Viafoura Engagement Cloud.
Book a Time

Get Your Guide to Audience Development

Not attending INMA World Congress? Make sure to download our white paper, How Audience Engagement Drives Retention, Loyalty and Revenue to stay in the know about the latest audience development technologies.

You’ll learn:

  • How media organizations are engaging their audiences in real-time
  • How direct relationships convert to revenue
  • How to use technology to drive social connectivity

Learn how to build and monetize your audience.

Download Guide

Missed MediaXchange? Key Insights for News Organizations

Missed MediaXchange? Key Insights for News Organizations

Key Insights from mediaXchange 2017

Rain or shine, we knew mediaXchange in New Orleans would be a great success. The event attracts the top news media executives and covers a variety of topics from key technologies to content strategy. Below we’ll cover our top insights from three of our favorite sessions.

Real Relationships are More Important than Ad Views

In the session, Audience Development: Monetizing with High Integrity Metrics, the Corporate Director of Audience Development for McClatchy, Daniel E. Schaub, highlighted the importance of building real relationships with readers and establishing yourself as a trusted news brand.

Schaub believes this is more important now than ever because news media organizations are being victimized by ad fraud.

While advertisers in the U.S. are spending an all-time high of $83 billion this year, only 3% of the 329 million websites that are competing for ad views are legitimate sites. Some of these websites have absolutely no content, while others contain fake or stolen news content. Either way, this takes away from your ad spend and doesn’t get your ads in front of the right people or in the right space.

Schaub stresses that publishers need to focus more on leveraging their trusted brands to build relationships with readers than on ad views or impressions.

He points out, “You have the opportunity to offer real people, real connections.”

How to Drive Subscriptions

In the session, Cutting-Edge Solutions to Driving Subscriptions, there were three points that resonated with us. First, that readers subscribe due to civic reasons, to gain subject-matter expertise, and to share information with others. They are triggered to subscribe when they encounter discussions of subject expertise, metered paywalls, a lifestyle change and marketing campaigns. That means that news organizations can greatly benefit from encouraging discussions that promote subject expertise on their websites, while putting up paywalls and triggering users with marketing ads and emails.

Second, 36% of people under the age of 35 are paying for news in some form. While older readers are more likely to buy an e-edition, a younger person will want “snappy, quick, personalized news.”

Third, the Executive Director of API, Tom Rosenstiel, highlights that newsrooms should take advantage of the untapped market of mobile coupons.

Strategies for Reader Engagement

In Proven Strategies for Reader Engagement, the Director of Consumer Marketing at Washington Post, Rich Handloff, believes personalization is the key to user engagement.

“At the Washington Post, we ask them to tell us what they’re interested in,” he said. “What they tell you, you will then be able to serve them up worthwhile content.”

They send out an email every Friday to their print subscribers to notify them what’s coming up over the weekend. They also send daily emails about the news that happened since their morning paper went to press.

We’d like to add that another key way to personalize information is with a notification feed that automatically posts information that is important to readers. They can follow authors, comments, and other users, and get real-time notifications in their feed.

Personalization and Audience Engagement With Viafoura

Our Head of Marketing and Business Development, Allison Munro, was also at mediaXchange discussing the Viafoura Viafoura Engagement Cloud that addresses many of these key learnings.

The platform gives news organizations a real-time commenting section that promotes civil discussion and subject expertise from readers. The engagement tools helps users connect to one another, to authors, and to your brand. Whereas the notification feed gives users a personalized view to increase their attention time and online engagement.

Now is the time to offer real connections to real people. Let’s chat about driving meaningful engagement for your news brand, connect with us today.
Let’s Connect

Connect with Viafoura at MediaXchange

New Orleans, a.k.a. the Big Easy, known for its tasty cuisine, fun nightlife, vibrant live-music, and the future of news—mediaXchange.

Will you be there?

Not attending mediaXchange? Don’t miss out learning how Viafoura empowers media organizations to engage, discover and grow their audiences, connect now.
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With so much to do and so many people to meet, we want to make sure you make the most of your time at New Orleans. Take in the sights, tastes and sounds of the French Quarter with our top 4 places, all conveniently located within walking distance from the Marriott Hotel:

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Love It!

Get Jazz-Fest-ready by visiting our favorite boutique in the French Quarter, “Love it!” by designer Danna Lea. Her inviting shop is filled with handmade and vintage-inspired dresses, bags and accessories, which make even the most unimaginative of minds feel like they’ve stepped back in time into a party!

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Cavan

As featured in USA Today and Vogue, Cavan is an elegantly-faded dining room located in the historic Cockerton mansion built in 1881. You’ll love the savoury snacks like the Fried Oyster Toast, and you’ll get a kick out of the shrine that resides on the top shelf of the bar to appease the “ghosts of Cavan”—filled with candles, sage, and every ghost’s favorite—gin.

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Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo

Whether you’re looking for a Voodoo doll to hex your ex, or you just need a bit of help winning the lottery, you have to visit Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo to check out their souvenirs or get a spiritual reading. This uniquely New Orleans shop doubles as a museum for Louisiana Voodoo, and it’s a place you’ll have to see to believe—quite literally with their no camera policy.

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Booth #205 at mediaXchange

Most importantly, come see us at booth #205 at mediaXchange to discover what’s on the horizon for Viafoura, and pick up some freebies. Everyone who visits will also be placed into a draw to win a $100 gift certificate to Cavan Restaurant! Click here for contest details.

If you haven’t already, book time with us by clicking here to chat 1:1 about the Viafoura Viafoura Engagement Cloud.
Connect Today
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