Digital News Initiative : last chance to finance your news project

So, you work in the news industry.

Let me guess… if you’re a news organisation, you’ve got plenty of ideas to develop your business. If you’re a startup, you also have lots of ideas to help news organisations grow their revenues. But in both cases your resources are stretched, and the overall economic climate of the sector doesn’t really help you secure funding for any of these innovations…

Let me introduce you to the Google Digital news Initiative. The DNI is the only fund available today to companies–whether they are tech companies or news organisations–across the whole of Europe aiming to develop news-related projects. So far, the DNI has distributed over €115 million to 559 ambitious projects.

The DNI is coming to an end, with a sixth and final round–€35 million in available funding–closing on the 3rd of December.

The DNI could finance 70% of the brilliant project buried in that folder you can’t bring yourself to open (a painful reminder of your depleted finances). It’s time to open the folder. The DNI also allows you to include internal costs in your budget. In fact, it could finance up to 100% of your project. Bottom line: you can innovate even if you don’t have the cash.

The cap is €1 Million in funding, with an average of €204k per project financed thus far.

Even better ? There are no strings attached. You don’t need to publicize Google support. Nor are you required to use any of Google technology. But all of this comes at a price: you’ve got to make the cut and the competition is fierce, with a 10% success rate across all applicants.

At CosaVostra we’re proud to beat that figure by a landslide with an 80% success rate in the last 2 rounds. With more than 30 applications so far, we’re the leading European consultancy helping projects to secure funding.

This is not to say we know the formula. Fortunately there is no such thing–which makes the application process all the more rewarding. But we have learned a few things I can share with you.

First, when you actually look at the short presentations of the projects which have been financed on the DNi website, you realise that their diversity is impressive:

From startups developing new paywall technologies to public broadcasters creating personalised radio streams for smart assistants– to Augmented Reality marketplaces launched by broadcaster associations.

What these projects have in common is that they’re not technological gadgets. They make sense business-wise. And that’s the first thing I would highlight.

This is not a fund not for opportunists. It’s a fund for enthusiasts. You’re talking to a mix of seasoned media professionals and Google experts. There is no room for bluff or improvisation.

The projects’ economic sustainability has become the main focus of the fund along its 3 years. Perhaps because at first they’ve financed a few very innovative and shiny projects which didn’t prove very tenable. For this final round of funding, the driving theme put forward is “monetisation and diversification”

To quote Google’s own words:
“We’re looking for innovative approaches that seek to create sustainable models for news, whether that’s diversification of revenue streams, creative applications of technology to save costs, all aspects of reader revenue (eg: subscriptions, memberships, contributions etc) or new ways of thinking around monetisation through products and user engagement.”

Now we can take a look at the main criteria the DNI put forward. They seem fairly obvious but they’re worth a careful examination.

Your project needs to be news related. This is an easy one. Your project has to be part of the news conversation. That means hard news and general interest topics rather than gardening or freshwater fishing.

Your project needs to make an impact on your ecosystem. That means that you need to aim high, either by setting a new standard for your ecosystem or by creating a tool which will be beneficial for a lot of actors.

Here, collaboration with other news organisations is seen as a big bonus. It is often the best way to give your project a greater reach from the start.

Your project needs to be innovative yet feasible. That’s a bit more of a challenge.

Innovation doesn’t mean creating new technologies from the start. New User experiences are counted as innovative. But they’ve got to be feasible. It means you’ve got to prove through your research that your project is not Sci-Fi or a pretty bit of wishful thinking. It is doable and you’re going to do it.

So how do you get your project financed?

You get the big picture I just described and you make sure that your project fits within it.

And you keep an eye for detail. You have to prove that your project is on your roadmap no matter what. This is essential, and the more precise you are the better.

That means a proper business plan based on well researched market trends, a detailed benchmark, wireframes to showcase your user journeys, and a compelling deck to sum it all up.

All these things should prove your project is a concrete one. It has a solid base and realistic revenue forecasts.

Of course, we at CosaVostra can help with all of this. Ready to undertake the challenge? I’d be glad to discuss it with you.

Louis Dumoulin
CosaVostra Head of the UK Office
0044 7401 663351
louis@cosavostra.com or lastDNIround@cosavostra.com