Personalised leaflets (Round 6)
Summary
NU.nl believes quality local journalism should be free because better informed people contribute to a better society. But monetisation is a challenge. By capitalising on the existing market for paper leaflets/direct mail, NU.nl believes it can create a scalable business model for local news. It wants to gather all the offers, unbundle and analyze them (using machine learning) and match these individual offers with user profiles to show the most relevant offers to a specific user. The result is personalised leaflets, a relevant and scalable business model for local news.
The solution
Traditionally, the Dutch market for paper leaflets is very big, with hundreds of different leaflets being delivered in the offline mailbox of almost every household. Recently, new environmental rulings limit the distribution of paper leaflets. Retailers still want to reach (potential) store visitors and we want to provide them this opportunity. NU.nl wants to gather these existing offers and apply machine learning to recognise individual offers, text, images and other characteristics. After matching these unbundled offers (and the location of shops) with our user profiles, we can show our 7.5 million users relevant, localised information (offers) around local news.