Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Paul Gerbino

Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group) <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com>

DARRELL GUNTER: I am so happy to have in our studio a very dear friend of mine, who is a phenomenal businessman who is going to impart a lot of knowledge to us today, Mr. Paul Gerbino, who has just rebranded his company as Creative Licensing International. Paul, welcome to the program.

PAUL GERBINO: Well, thank you very much, Darrell; it’s great to be here.

DG: You know, before we jump into Creative Licensing International, it would be helpful for you to share with our audience a little bit about education and background and exactly how we came to know each other.

PG: Yeah, well, you know, it’s funny. My educational background was, I was a musician. And I was studying music in college, and I came to a realization at one point that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, and realized I had to get a job. So I ended up starting out in the hotel business where I eventually became Director of Sales and Marketing for a couple of four- and five-star hotels, buying a lot of advertising, got to know the publisher of a business travel magazine. He talked me into publishing. And here I have been in media for over 30 years. So it’s been a really interesting journey, especially coming from the media world, where not only did I start out selling advertising, but work through to actually running publications, and in 1998, building my first website.

DG: Wow, Huge. And so, we met. We both served on the Content Board of the SIIA — for those who are not familiar with it, the Software Information Industry Association — and that’s where our great friendship blossomed from the beginning.

PG: And I tend to gravitate to very smart people. So there, I’m buttering up the interview. But the reality is that yeah, it was SIIA. We were on the board of the content division, which now has gone through many different permutations. And it was probably the first time — because I was again a publisher at the time — the first time that I started to see my content as business information.

DG: Okay.

PG: Not just articles, serving in the markets that I was serving, but actually as information that can be used by anybody who has an interest in the topics. So it was an eye-opening experience for me. And then being around people like you, who understood that. I learned a tremendous amount around, you know, just understanding what my content could be in this environment of the information industry.

DG: All right. So tell us about the business that you’re in because we were talking earlier, and I said to you, I said, “Well, you used to be a publisher. Now you’re in the content licensing business. But you’re helping publishers to further publish the already published information.” Tell us about that.

PG: Well, and it’s funny. The focus of what we do is really based on a three-legged stool, and the original name of the company was Triumvirate Content Consultants. You know, it was funny, we really didn’t consult on content. We licensed content. And Triumvirate was a word that a lot of people have difficulty spelling, including me.

DG: Including yours truly.

PG: Exactly. So it was time to change the name. And so, really, it goes to the principles by which I work, and my team works, in that for content licensing to be effective, it needs to fulfill three points. One, it needs to be able to extend the brand reach of the content, the owner or the content creator, the author. It needs to be able to get their name and their presence out into the world. The second is that by getting it out to the world, they often find new audiences for their content. And when I talk about that, my first experience in licensing content, I was doing news on sludge pumps and flusher meters. Now an engineer said to me, “Well, it’s actually pronounced flushometer.” But I said “flusher meter gets a lot more laughs.”

DG: [Laughs]

PG: But if you asked me then, the readers of my content were people with grease under their fingernails, the manufacturers and people in the workshops, who were learning about new products to help them do business. And by licensing, I found patent attorneys, professors, a lot of other kinds of users pouring over this content, which made me realize that by licensing this content, I can find new audiences. And that’s the second leg. The third leg is revenue. You know, with a lot of publishers, they have content that sits in an archive, that they’re hoping gets some usage through long-tail searches.

DG: Right.

PG: But again, otherwise, it’s just sitting there. And if you can monetize that content, if you can get a usage of that content, that turns into new revenues for you, brand reach for you, new audiences for you, why not?

DG: Mm-hmm.

PG: So that’s what we do. We help our publishers and content creators to get their content out there into the marketplace.

DG: And do you find, Paul, that sometimes they just haven’t thought about it? I mean, it’s just there.

PG: Yeah, it’s funny. And if I understand your question correctly, I think a big part of what I do, when I talk to publishers, is educate them on content licensing.

DG: Mm-hmm.

PG: Because they’re not thinking about it, especially in the B2B space. They’re caught up in the tyranny of the urgent.

DG: Okay.

PG: And the urgent could be advertising revenues, could be subscription revenues, could be traffic to their websites. All those kinds of things that drive what they perceive as their bottom line. And it’s very much a big part of what they do. So they don’t think about incremental revenue.

DG: Okay.

PG: Especially incremental revenue that is so profitable because the content was already paid for...

DG: Right.

PG: ...for its primary use. That revenue coming in from content licensing falls right to the bottom line. So it is definitely one that you spend a lot of time really educating, especially in the B2B space, what content licensing is. Now other industries like Scholarly, they’re more used to this kind of business model. But even then, they may be used to it, but do they understand it fully? So part of our job is to educate.

DG: And so with that, I mean, recently, you and I have had the opportunity of working together on a particular deal. But the vendor that I represent is new to the marketplace.

PG: Right.

DG: And which means that they don’t really have subscribers yet, but they will.

PG: Yes.

DG: How do you manage the expectations of your clients to see the vision for it?

PG: Yeah.

DG: And the investment of their time with their content upon new markets.

PG: So there’s a couple aspects to licensing that, you know, when I explain to my clients what to look for or what to expect, to level set their expectations, and I said that there are some licensing deals that you’ll do that will within six months produce revenue.

DG: Right.

PG: There are others that are like mining gold, that you’re going out there and you’re digging a lot of holes until you find that gold vein. And so you look at the business model, like the one you’re talking about. You look at their business model. Does it make sense? Does it have the right reach that can expose the publishers’ or the creators’ content in the right places? You know, what is the potential universe of users of that model?

DG: Right.

PG: And then you go in there as a speculator, and you use content. And you make sure that you put the right protections on the content, so it can’t be abused.

DG: And what are those protections, Paul?

PG: Yeah, so that’s a great question. We actually have a document that we call Licensing Best Practices. It’s an internal document that we use every time we do a contract. And we literally go through every licensing agreement and go through the check-offs. Yep. Doesn’t have this, wait, this is out. Oh, they have sublicensing in there. All right. Well, who’re they sublicensing to? Where is the content going? I mean, I had a former partner when I first started this business who used to use a phrase content gone wild

DG: Oh!

PG: I mean, think about it. When you have an ambiguous sublicensing clause, it doesn’t tell the publisher where the content is going, who’s using it, how it’s being used. And I once found, it was interesting when we took over a client, we were doing some investigation. And when we talked to an aggregator, they said, “Oh no, we’re already getting that content.” What do you mean you’re getting it?

DG: [Laughs]

PG: And so we started to do the money trail, a little forensic accounting, and we found that there’s an original licensing agreement with another group...

DG: Oh, my goodness.

PG: ...that had sublicensing in the agreement. And then, you start to go, you start to realize, “Well, geez, if I don’t put a stop to that or get some controls over that, it’s content gone wild.”

DG: Wow. And once that horse has left the barn...

PG: It’s hard to get it back. It is hard to pull back, because the contracts themselves don’t always allow for a legal route to force that aggregator to pulling it all back. Plus, once it’s out, you have no way of getting it removed from databases. I mean, the other best practice that we have is, when an agreement ends, there has to be a purge of the content from the database.

DG: Right.

PG: Because again, you want to know where it is, how it’s being used and when, so...

DG: Let me give you a case study.

PG: Oh, go for it.

DG: Now, I’m going to leave the name of the publisher out.

PG: Go ahead.

DG: But if there was a publisher that has been around since 2013, and they have their database 20,000 items of which I think there’s like 13,000 articles, but the other 7,000 a different type of artifacts, and their information is global. Global news that’s translated from local language into English from a local cultural perspective.

PG: Right.

DG: Now, I know that previous conversations with another particular vendor, their hypothesis sounded great, but they just didn’t have any content. What is the minimum number of articles you think represents enough to represent your time to go pitch their service?

PG: Well, and that’s another great question in that, when we evaluate a content creator, (A) can we help them? And (B) is the amount of work worth it on both sides, both for the publisher or the creator and ourselves?

DG: That’s right.

PG: And it’s funny, we have clients that have one book that we have done deals for, that was definitely worth it from both parties’ standpoint. We have other clients that do, you know, 1,000 articles a year, that don’t produce a lot because the topics of their articles tend to be very thin and don’t have a lot of depth. So, you know, it really stems from what we always say is you need to do a content audit.

DG: Okay.

PG: You need to audit what you have. Not only in quantity, but the quality.

DG: Yes.

PG: You can have a single book that can do gangbusters, or you can have 1,000 articles that does very little.

DG: Ah.

PG: It’s really around what the content offers the marketplace. Again, you know, you and I talk about this all the time with metadata and search. If your articles are thin, there’s not a lot of content in them, and the metadata is thin, well, they’re not going to be discovered. I don’t care what platform you’re on.

DG: Mm-hmm.

PG: So what we always do with a client is we usually start off with somewhat of a content audit and developing descriptions for all their content assets, so that they can look at it differently than they usually do. Most publishers don’t look at their content through the lens of the value beyond their core audience.

DG: Mm-hmm.

PG: And the other thing is these content description documents that we do, and it’s literally where we have a standard template for questions that we ask about a piece of content, a journal, a B2B magazine, or book, or whatever, that are usually the questions that we get from licensees.

DG: Right.

PG: And one publisher that we worked with was so happy with the descriptions that we did, that every time they bring on a new employee, that’s the document they hand them. “Here, read this. It shows you exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.” But again, that content audit is a very critical component that every content creator, every random content owner should do on an annual basis. You know, (A), what do we have? (B), what do we add this year?

DG: Wow. So I want to switch gears a little bit. So let’s talk about AI. And what we’re learning about ChatGPT and all of these AI tools is that they need information to build their intelligence about. Where does content licensing come into that? Because if someone is paying for access to your database, but then they’re putting it into like a ChatGPT or whatever the latest flavor is, and they’re creating something new...

PG: Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny because I just posted on to the Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting website, an article that had appeared in The Wall Street Journal, and the headline was this. “Chatbots Are Digesting the Internet. The Internet Wants to Get Paid.”

DG: I love it.

PG: Yeah. And here’s the thing, it was funny. Since I started the business in 2015, I’ve been very aware that a lot of machine learning has been going on with publishers’ content, both in front and behind the paywall. But since 2015, I’ve been talking to publishers saying, “Guys, you need to be aware that there is scraping going on of your content, even behind your paywalls. And it’s being used for machine learning, whether it’s financial analysts on stock trades that want to know what industries are doing, whether it’s media monitoring companies, and by the way, all this machine learning that’s going on, they’re making money on your content.”

DG: Right.

PG: Well, for years, it fell on deaf ears because it was out of sight, out of mind. We weren’t dealing with it. I’ve got the tyranny of the urgent. I don’t care about that. It wasn’t until ChatGPT and all the press about how it’s learning on all the content on the web did publishers finally go, “Wait a minute. That’s my content they’re using. I want to get paid for that.”

DG: That’s right, that’s right, that’s right!

PG: So it has definitely been... ChatGPT was the tipping point for publishers to start being concerned and start being aware.

DG: And so being that they’re concerned, and being that they’re more aware, I guess we probably will see publishers be more open to embrace these technologies and maybe invest in these technologies?

PG: Well, I think it’s a couple of things. One is yes, a smart publisher will invest in this technology to help streamline their operations, whether it is to help young journalists who are writing articles for the first time, get an article started, to do research using it because I think AI as a research tool is actually a great tool. I think that they’ll look at streamlining some of the things they do today from an operational standpoint, and how AI can assist that, especially in the area of SEO and those types of things. I think from the standpoint of AI using their content,

I think they’re starting to say no, wait a minute, we should get some benefit from this. And part of that is... and one thing we don’t have in this country, like for example, where media monitoring companies in Europe need to pay by role, need to pay the publishers for use of that content. And they do that through collective organizations, re-productions rights organizations, things of that nature. In the U.S., the laws aren’t similar to the EU. So right now, they’re doing a little bit unchecked.

DG: Okay.

PG: So one of the things that we’re going to have to do in this country is, (1), we need to get the laws updated so that copyright means something. And (2) is whether it is an existing organization or development of an organization, a collective rights organization to... because it’s going to be impossible for machine learning to do deals with every single publisher, just too many of different sizes. I mean, yeah, if you’re doing the New York Times, it’s easy to do that deal. But if you’re doing a small B2B publisher who has good content, well, it’s just a lot to manage. But I think that smart publishers are going to take advantage of the technology, and also start to benefit from the use of that technology of their content.

DG: Right. Wow, wow. And so Paul, your business, of course, is international.

PG: Yes.

DG: A majority of your clients, do they come from outside the U.S., or Europe, or is it like 50-50 or a third, a third, and a third?

PG: Yeah, I think, well, most of our clients are U.S. based, but we have publishers in different countries. We are, you know, international. So, again, really a lot of our licensing deals, if you look at licensing, I put it in two buckets, wholesale licensing and retail licensing. Wholesale being your big aggregators and things of that nature. Retail being individual licensing deals with publishers in different countries, or companies that do medical conferences, that need content for those conferences, more of that kind of individual-type deals. The other thing, too, is we’re not just content. I mean, we’ve done licensing or theme parks in different parts of the world.

DG: Wow.

PG: And yeah, unfortunately that one didn’t work out, but we were very much involved with that. As well as licensing a brand, because a publisher or content owner has a brand. And that brand alone can be licensed to an event in, say, India or Singapore.

DG: Because it gives that event that credibility.

PG: Exactly.

DG: You know, it’s funny you should mention that. I just finished watching the movie Air on Amazon Prime.

PG: Yep, I haven’t seen it yet. But yes.

DG: And the guy who designed the actual first shoe, two things he did. He came up with the name Air Jordan. Then he saw the picture of Michael Jordan slamming with the legs.

PG: Yeah.

DG: He designed that logo. When you see that logo, you know that logo means champion, you know that logo means quality. It’s amazing.

PG: Well. And it’s funny, I think, that whenever I get into a discussion about brand and I get into a little bit of a disagreement with the person discussing it, I always go, “I got 28 books on branding on my business shelf right now.” Because people don’t realize the importance of brand.

DG: Right.

PG: I don’t care what industry you’re in. People buy from companies they know, that they trust or perceive as thought leaders.

DG: Yes.

PG: So whether it’s in the industrial space, or it’s in the consumer space, or in the scholarly space, a brand can have great power.

DG: Yeah. I’ve got a question for you. I was thinking, I know you go to the Charleston conference every year.

PG: Yes.

DG: Have you been approaching universities about content licensing? They have so much different content that they create. They got the institutional repositories. Have you found that to be a source of revenue for universities?

PG: Yeah, I mean, we’ve done some work for some university presses over the years. And yes, I think that university presses can generate revenue for their universities or even their own division to create more content and develop more. Again, for me, content, whether it’s university press or B2B or B2C, it’s content. It is information that can be used. And I often equate content like water. The information — the content — will take the form of whatever container you put it in. Yeah. And I stole that analogy from Anthea Stratigos from Outsell who taught me that in 2004 oh, my God. It must have been 2008, my first Outsell Conference.

DG: Of course.

PG: But it stuck with me because if you look at content as information that can be crunched and manipulated and moved, and take the form of any bucket you put it in, now you’re no longer thinking well, this is university press content or this is a newspaper content, this is data. It’s not defined by the bucket where it came from. Let it define itself in the use of by industry and by the marketplace.

DG: That’s a phenomenal point, Paul. Paul, believe it or not, we’re running out of time. I tell you...

PG: Oh, no!

DG: Yeah, time goes fast. I did want to ask you about what companies like Underline are doing with video content.

PG: Yeah.

DG: It’s early days. What is your prediction about video, scientific conference lecture video content?

PG: Yeah. So first of all, I think Underline’s business model is a great business model. And for spirit of full disclosure, I licensed some of my clients’ content to Underline. I think that the concept of creating a platform that is searchable, that is viewable, that can be licensed to libraries and universities for use by the students and professors, and things of that nature, are important. I think, video content, we’re doing a lot of work in that space, especially if you get to create transcripts on your videos.

DG: Yes.

PG: It creates a whole new opportunity. It broadens out the usage, both in its discoverability with search and the ability to translate, especially if timestamped transcripts, closed captioning, could be used in China or other parts of the world in local languages. The other thing, I think, about content and why video and podcast, by the way, are so important is everybody learns differently.

DG: Yes, yes, yes.

PG: Everybody has a learning style. Some people can read and learn. Some people have to hear it to understand it and to digest it. Some people need the visuals to help them and hearing it to help them process it. So creating the different formats of video or content to get your information out there, I think, is critical.

DG: Wow. And so what is your thoughts about the remainder of the year that we see here with ChatGPT. There’s a lot of concern in scholarly publishing, about authors who are creating articles using ChatGPT. And I recently saw a publisher, Anderson Publishing, add to their, not disclaimer, but their rules that the authors must disclose if they use ChatGPT, where did it reside in the article. Well, what are your thoughts about using ChatGPT to create articles?

PG: Yeah, and this really goes to a bigger, broader question about journalism and scholarly publishing. Somebody once said to me, just because somebody is an influencer or puts content on the web, doesn’t mean that they’re a journalist and the reality is that a lot of people are not journalists. Frank Bilotto, who does some legal work for me, speaks about the issues of people who write about topics but are not experts.

DG: The 360 guy!

PG: The 360 guy. He said on a video of his own that, if you were a mediocre or worse journalist, you got a lot to be worried about. If you’re a great journalist, you don’t.

DG: Right.

PG: And the reason being is that, (1), people should know who’s writing the article. So you should have a byline. And if it’s AI, then the AI should be defined as a byline. Second of all, again, if you think about the fact that content from the ChatGPT has been created off of content it scraped off the web.

DG: Right.

PG: So the attribution of all the places ChatGPT got the information to create that should be at the end of every article.

DG: Right.

PG: Right?

DG: Patience, right?

PG: Oh, I’m telling you. So the point being is that I think, ChatGPT is going to change the way we do business, especially in writing content.

DG: Okay.

PG: You know, I wrote my first press release on ChatGPT.

DG: Oh, wow.

PG: Now, I had to change it, and I had to adjust it and I actually gave it to Reed Griffin, who’s a writer I work with, who is really great, to really make it look good. But it was good enough for me to get away with, if I handed it to you. But I think that it’s going to challenge scholarly journals, especially, because the ease of creating content, the barriers to entry of becoming a content creator has dropped tremendously.

DG: Okay. Believe it or not, we have come to the close of our interview. Thank you for being a guest on The Innovators Saga!

PG: Darrell, thank you very much for having me.