Sky News has announced distribution deals with YouTube, Microsoft News, Facebook and Taboola, further extending its digital content creation and distribution capabilities to bring its news, analysis and commentary to more Australians than ever before.
The content partnerships follow an extensive period of record-breaking digital growth for the network, with Sky News now delivering more than 20 million video views each month across its digital platforms.
Paul Whittaker, chief executive of Sky News, said: “Our partnerships with YouTube, Microsoft News, Facebook and Taboola are an important first step, a long time in the making and with still a long way to go, to monetise our trusted news content on digital platforms ensuring continued investment and focus on local journalism.
“The digital content agreements will deliver increased reach for our premium news and introduce new audiences to the award-winning content available across the full suite of Sky News channels on Foxtel.”
Sky News content, including news and commentary from the channel’s leading programs, is now available across YouTube and Microsoft News including MSN.com.
Partnering with Facebook for a initiative Facebook Watch, Sky News will produce a bespoke program “Unpacked”.
The daily news show will take a deep-dive into a major news story each day, speaking with expert guests as well as reporting from the field to provide a unique point of view from everyday Australians.
Sky News has appointed Taboola as its content recommendation service on SkyNews.com.au. Taboola will provide on-site recommendations and advertising, and its engagement tools will be adopted across the Sky News newsroom. This follows a network-wide deal between Taboola and News Corp Australia.
Following an internal review of its platforms and partners, from this week Sky News will no longer make its video content available on Twitter. Sky News will use Twitter primarily for breaking news and to post links back to SkyNews.com.au.
Sky News operates a national digital news network SkyNews.com.au. Its exclusive breaking news and audio-visual journalism delivers more than 20 million monthly video views on digital platforms and millions more across a syndicated news ecosystem including News Corp Australia masthead websites such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail, The Advertiser and news.com.au.