In this special episode of The MadTech Podcast, Dave Barr and Nick Fletcher, co-founders of TruTxt, join ExchangeWire's John Still to discuss localisation and monetisation of international publisher traffic.

TruTxt is FirstPartyStudio’s first incubation supported by FirstPartyCapital. The AI-powered platform helps publishers grow international audiences, improve engagement, and increase revenue through real-time content translation, localisation, and advertising optimisation infrastructure.

Dave and Nick discuss the challenges faced by the publishing industry and the global traffic dilemma. While digital publishers are attracting an increasingly global audience, non-local language content is often deprioritised. As content consumption shifts towards multimedia, translation and localisation will unlock more opportunities for publishers to regrow lost traffic and revenue.

The Global Traffic Dilemma

Publishers have been faced with growing editorial constraints and a diminishing market over the last few years. However, there is another point of friction: a growing volume of foreign traffic arriving on publisher websites that is not localised and monetised effectively. As such, a big chunk of inventory is being dismissed when it could be leveraged as a premium sell opportunity.

In a previous role, Dave witnessed just over 40% of traffic in a non-local language generate over £10m in revenue. Furthermore, 60% of that traffic was unsold as buyers can be too focused on the point of page load. As buyers want safer and easier places to buy inventory, they focus on core markets while ignoring ROW. However, monetising international traffic can unlock better quality inventory and still keep revenue within the region.

In previous days, the manual costs and process of translation did not make it a viable business problem to be solved. Unlike then, when foreign language teams would adapt content for different markets, TruTxt uses native CMS language for translation. Content becomes accessible based off of device language, improving user experience and engagement. This will also introduce new buyers and increase fill rate, creating a revenue-per-session experience for publishers.

AI & Content Opportunities

With advancements in AI, translation has become quicker and more feasible. AI models will also improve in accuracy as they constantly learn the lexicon, from abbreviations to translation errors. This eliminates the overheads by having international content automatically translated and recalled as an ad unit in a premium position, making it commercially viable for publishers.

TruTxt provides a way for publishers to elevate their offerings to a community, and potentially invest more into editorial and secure significant sponsorship. Sports is a key example of the size of this opportunity. For example, a UK publisher with premiership football content may have many African players who are restrained by language barriers. Unlocking the content will release 20% of that publisher's traffic back into circulation at a premium rate.

The Future of Publisher Monetisation

Localising international traffic not only expands publishers' readership across regions, but also improves dwell times. The multimedia play is another key consideration. Video is often deactivated by publishers as most users bounce when such content is not in their local language. Regaining that element enhances the revenue line where it would previously have been at zero.

Presently, multimedia can be time-consuming, and subtitling in foreign languages using speech-to-text is the quick and easy solution. Further down the road map, Nick sees this expanding by turning the translated text into AI voiceovers and lip syncing it back to the video product, allowing the presenter to "speak" in any language.

Beyond language, translation can even apply to things like measurement conversions for food brands. With its large base of test publishers, TruTxt is continuously adapting to various needs and preferences, providing a strong foundation to scale the platform moving forward.