"We license content to support our core mission and develop more audience," said Alice Ting, VP, licensing & syndication for The New York Times, in a Connectiv Executive Summit talk earlier this month. "There is value in analyzing your content and creating packages. Today we have more resources—and can get to our international audience more directly."

When it comes to licensing content, Paul Gerbino, a partner at Triumvirate Content Consultants, wants you to look at your content in a different way.

According to the Connectiv Media & Information census, by 2020, paid content and information services will be the second largest revenue stream for B2B media information companies, trailing only events. That’s a fundamental shift for many companies that continue to see advertising—in both print and digital formats—as a leading business line.

SIPA: You're speaking at the SIPA Conference on content licensing. How did that revenue area come about for you? Bruce Brumberg, founder and editor-in-chief, myStockOptions.com. When we went live in June 2000, internet "business models"—if you could call them that in those days—were all about getting as much traffic as possible with the goal of either selling advertising or the company. We tried to be advertising supported, but financial firms we approached to be sponsors, such as JP Morgan Private Bank (now part of JP Morgan) told us that, "We really like your content more." So we decided to go the route of content licensing, which plays more to my strengths, too. Then licensing prospects started asking, "Why should we license your content when we can link to it for free?" So that's when the gates went up. In 2003 we moved to what is now known as the "freemium" membership model for our public site and haven't looked back. 

“It’s all about getting our content out there to new audiences and extracting value from it,” said Alice Ting, VP of brand development, licensing & syndication for The New York Times, delivering the keynote at SIIA’s Buying & Selling Content event last week in New York. “Archival distribution, magazines, content packages, film options—yes, people now option our articles to create films.”

It’s a tough market for content licensers—the near limitless number of resources online, an increasing willingness of some users to “borrow” content without compensation and a changing client base where the role of corporate librarians who know markets and sources is changing. On the bright side, advertisers are emerging as a new customer base for licensed content but that also means publishers have to learn how to sell differently.  

Between Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y (Millennials), there are more intergenerational workers in the workforce and customers for business content at one time than ever before. But the content consumption habits of Millennials are turning the industry upside down. How do you reach a generation with endless choices and ingrained belief that content should be free?