Nigerian Publisher Ringier African Digital Publishing has been named among the winners of the Google News Initiative innovation challenge.
The Initiative had announced that it was taking steps to fund projects that inject new ideas into the news industry.
As contained in a statement sent to odunews.com, Google News Initiative stated that the 108 winners cut across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, Turkey & Africa and North America representing 39 countries around the regions.
“This funding will enable our partners to develop sustainable business models by diversifying revenue streams and/or increasing audience engagement”,GNI said.
Google had earlier announced that it intends to fund selected projects up to $150,000 and will finance up to 70% of the total project costs of the winners.
Some of the winners are:
- Ringier Africa Digital Publishing in Nigeria will be increasing personalization across their platform using a blend of prediction, recommendation and local information pages to increase user engagement.
- Demirören Teknoloji Anonim Şirketi in Turkey wants to solve the tagging process for the Turkish language to help with the news discovery distribution process. Currently this work requires cumbersome manual work from their journalists, taking a precious share of their time.
- Daily news publisher Israel Hayom will be creating a loyalty scheme where online users get real-life rewards in the form of tickets or money-saving offers.
- Nas News wants to engage Iraq’s citizens in video debates for positive change with a mobile-first social and news platform that allows users to read and debate on local and national topics.
- L’Orient le Jour in Lebanon wants to build a new loyalty plan to offer special and personalized privileges to subscribers via an interactive platform.
- The National in the UAE will develop a service that converts quality text news into audio in real time, in both English and Arabic.
- Côte d’Ivoire – Association 3535 (AKWABA)
- Ghana – Apex Admedia ltd, Ghana Web BV
- Jordan – Sowt Podcasting and Training L.L.C; Al Bawaba News LTD
- Kenya – Africa Uncensored
- Lebanon – Whiteheadal
- Morocco – TelQuel Digital.
- South Africa – Food For Mzansi, a digital news platform of Farmers for Change; Daily Maverick (Pty) Ltd
- Rwanda – The New Times
- Turkey – Demirören Media
- UAE – Aloloom Platform
See other winners here
