Krux zeros in on giving publishers power on their sites

One cloud data management platform wants publishers in control of their data, not third-parties

In this highly-digitized world, information is power, but the key is unlocking it and using the troves of data to improve your customer's experience to build a trusted brand. 

One young start-up is looking to aid content publishers better deliver the online content to consumers while optimizing monetization. Krux, founded in 2010, has been working hard to democratize the data that is collected on content-rich pages and applications in order to better service the creators and the users.

Many content publishers, such as new organizations, are either ignoring the data-rich analytics that are on their sites or they are just letting third-party advertisers and partners use the data for their interests, rather than the creators themselves.

Krux wants to bring all the pieces together to create a mutually beneficial system where creators are maintaining their audience, consumers are getting quality tailored content, brands are increasing their advertising revenue, and the overall business confidence improves.

A part of this evolving solution could be the new president at Krux, former head of the Wall Street Journal's digital arm, Gordon McLeod. After leaving NewsCorp in 2010, McLeod was in search of the next project that could excite him while putting to good use his knowledge of the problems facing publishers online -- and just a few weeks ago he landed the head seat at Krux.

"I just saw that so many publishers were zeroed in on creating their content with little detailed input on what the readers were looking for and how they could retain an audience," McLeod told me in an interview. 

How Krux Works

Krux likes to think of its cloud platform as a more efficient plumbing system to provide better, faster content to consumers, while being more effective in the advertising sales that correlates with the readers. Krux provides a platform that analyzes your Web pages in their entreaty -- not just ads and not just content. Because of this, the company is able to create a complete footprint showing not just how many and where the tags are on the page, but also who placed them their and if they can be traced back to any partners that aren't supposed to be tagging content.

Some publishers run into the problem where there are too many, or inefficient tags on their pages, but because they work with multiple advertisers and sellers, they are unable to identify where the problems are and how to fix them quickly. Krux can spot the tags and even follow the daisy-chain instantly to show the originator of a give tag.

This can help publishers that have been seeing drags in their load times -- which is often a major element that detracts consumers and sends them to faster sites. It also has often opened publishers' eyes to the hidden tags that come with toolbars that they install for content editing -- many users often overlook the possibility that those are the root of certain problems.

But more than identify problem tags and areas, it helps companies uphold their privacy policies and keep themselves accountable -- McLeod believes that once a brand builds and maintains trust from its users, the audience with pay it back with continued traffic. 

Publishers will also be able to maintain and analyze their own data, rather than relying on advertising partners or other third-parties to provide them with analytics on a daily, weekly or periodical basis. 

While the platform is designed and priced for bigger organizations like its customers at The New York TImes, NBC or the Financial Times, Krux has recently released a mobile app system that helps smaller companies control their tags and data across multiple platforms.

The Krux Apps suite provides audience, performance, and revenue optimization tools for the smaller businesses looking for efficiency and scalability of cloud-based data. 

Krux has also preformed several case studies to see just how data management can improve a company's online presence and in it was able to improve the average page load time 13% for a book review sharing site, DeQueVa.es, and drove a 25% bump in ad revenue BrainyQuote by supplying better information to the advertising parties that bid on online space across the Web.

McLeod hopes that with the expansion of the products that Krux is offering, that more companies will understand just how much value having this data and site control can have on their overall business. 

"I am looking forward to smarter, better data serving the publishers just as much as it can serve the users that enjoy a personalized experience," McLeod said.