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Adapt ive Content

© 2013 4imprint, Inc. All rights reserved

Adapt ive content: I f you love your content, set i t f ree

That little chunk of wisdom comes from a Sting song about relationships. It

seemed like the perfect way to start this Blue Paper® because, if we’re being

completely honest, technology and content have a strange relationship. In fact,

they’re kind of like Sonny and Cher (another music legend). They work great

together, but sometimes they just don’t get along. We’re not prepared to say

which one is Sonny and which one is Cher, but let’s just say that technology tends

to flip it’s hair behind its ear a lot. Their marriage is … complicated.

Technology continues to evolve faster and faster, and the proliferation of

devices and screen sizes, and the changing ways in which people use them, have

caused serious challenges for content providers. With so many different ways

to view content, how do you possibly maintain control over how the content

gets presented? The short answer is you don’t. You have to move past the idea

of content presentation and start embracing the idea of content as data. You’re

essentially bringing Sonny and Cher in for some marriage counseling. The goal is

to create a harmonious relationship between technology and content that gets

them working together to communicate your message more effectively and to

spread it further. You’re shooting for your own version of “I Got You Babe.”

Enter adaptive content, a fairly new concept that’s perfectly suited to get

technology and content back on speaking terms. At the core it’s a fairly

simple idea—start thinking about your content like Legos®. The future

of effective content lies in building structure into the content itself and

letting go of how it gets displayed. Your content becomes the Lego bricks.

There’s a distinct structure that enables the pieces to connect with each

other, but the bricks can be assembled in a variety of ways. Adaptive

content can dynamically adjust to device, screen size, and user preference,

but still maintain your message because of the underlying structure built

into the content itself. Because it’s so flexible, it can be reassembled and

recycled. It can be more easily shared and spread. It travels farther, and

takes your message to more users.

Let’s look at an early example of adaptive content, one that actually predates

the term. Karen McGrane, in her presentation Adapting Ourselves for Adaptive

Content, notes that in the early 80’s, “TV Guide® recognized that they were

not in the magazine publishing business. They were in the content business.”1

1 McGrane, Karen. “Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content.” Karen McGrane. Karen McGrane, 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 08 Apr. 2013. <http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/>.


They began to approach their content, the descriptions of individual television

programs, differently once they began to separate it from the confines of the

printed page.

TV Guide decided to build structure into the short, medium

and long descriptions they created for every television episode.

McGrane points out, “They realized that they were going to get

more value from what they were creating if they had this in a

clean base of content that they would be able to re-use in the

future.”2 At the time, creating three different descriptions for

each episode seemed like a lot of extra work since there was no

outlet for the additional formats and no plan for monetizing

them. But they moved forward anyway and created a vast

database of clean, structured content that could be reused

quickly and easily.

Fast forward to today, and TV Guide’s structured content assets are driving the

channel directories of satellite and cable networks all over the country, and of

services like TIVO® and Netflix®. “All of the value, all of the assets were in [the]

content; it was in the data,”3 says McGrane. Meanwhile, all assets related to

creating the actual printed magazine, all of them, sold for $1 in 2008.

Adaptive content provides a way to leverage your content in conjunction with

the latest digital technologies. It’s about building structure at the content level

in order to free your content from device and platform constraints, giving it the

ability to travel farther and giving you a better return on your investment.

Why should your organizat ion care about adapt ive content?That’s a fair question. Put simply, no organization wants to invest in something

that won’t generate a return, right? Adaptive content is a means of leveraging

a greater return on the time and money spent developing content for your

organization. It brings the content portion of your content marketing efforts

up to the same “technologically advanced” level as the other technology-based

tools you use to spread your message. Things like websites, social media services,

mobile apps, and the various devices that employees and consumers use to access

your content.

2 Ibid3 McGrane, Karen. “Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content.” Karen McGrane. Karen McGrane, 4 Sept. 2012.

Web. 08 Apr. 2013. <http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/>.


You can’t accurately evaluate the case for adaptive content without taking a

moment to look at the evolution of the larger digital landscape. As technology

continues to push relentlessly forward, organizations will be dealing more and

more with adapting their content to a growing array of outputs. For example,

as smartphone and tablet usage continue to grow, the number of different

screen sizes has increased. According to a recent survey conducted by Mobify, a

technology company that specializes in making the Web more mobile-friendly,

among just the top 10 most popular global screen sizes, the largest screen is 13.5

times larger than the smallest one.4 That’s quite the range, and it effectively

illustrates the challenge that companies face in creating and sharing content.

How do you make a blog post or product page look the same on two screens that

are sized so differently? The truth is you can’t, at least not in a way that’s

remotely usable for anyone who’s trying to view it.

This is exactly why you want Sonny and Cher to get back together.

Sorry, we mean technology and content. And the good news is, on the

technology side of the equation, there’ve been several new developments

that have created a firm foundation on which adaptive content can

flourish. There are three innovations in particular that create a great

environment for adaptive content—responsive design, HTML5, and CSS3.

Responsive des ign At the heart of responsive design is a fluid layout that adapts to screen size and

device capabilities dynamically. Instead of a static page that positions text, images

and rich media in exactly the same place, you get a page that displays different

combinations of those elements based on what you’re using to view it. One of

the most successful recent implementations of responsive design is the website for

the “Boston Globe.” Web designer Ethan Marcotte was instrumental in the design

and development of that site, and he described the basic technological elements

of responsive design in an article for alistapart.com. He explains:

Fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries are the three technical

ingredients for responsive Web design, but it also requires a different way

of thinking. Rather than quarantining our content into disparate, device-

specific experiences, we can use media queries to progressively enhance

our work within different viewing contexts.5

As Marcotte demonstrates in an example site he created for the article, the fluid

grid provides the underlying structure that allows the pages to scale elements as

4 Mobify. “Global Screen Size Diversity Infographic: Sizing Up Man’s New Best Friend.”Mobify. Mobify, 20 Dec. 2012. Web. 8 Apr. 2013. <http://www.mobify.com/blog/global-screen-size-diversity/>.

5 Marcotte, Ethan. “Responsive Web Design.” A List Apart. A List Apart, 25 May 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design>.


the size of the browser window changes. Flexible images are similar in the sense

that they allow for a fair amount of scaling up or down based on the size of the

browser window. The media queries that Marcotte talks about, part of the CSS3

standard that we mentioned earlier, are where the real responsive horsepower

lies. Marcotte describes them this way:

A media query allows us to target not only certain device classes, but to

actually inspect the physical characteristics of the device rendering our

work. For example, following the recent rise of mobile WebKit®, media

queries became a popular client-side technique for delivering a tailored

style sheet to the iPhone®, Android® phones, and their ilk.6

Beyond information about the browser the device is running, media queries

let you gather specific details like the pixel width of the device’s screen. Based

on that information, you can deliver a single-column page layout optimized

for that screen size versus a three-column layout that’s more suited to a

desktop screen. You can also deliver site style image assets that are adjusted for

different resolutions, reducing the size of the assets that a mobile device needs

to download. All of this happens dynamically, delivering an experience that’s

optimized for the device accessing your site.

CSS3CSS3 is the designation for the latest update to the CSS (cascading style

sheets) standard set by the W3C® (The World Wide Web Consortium),

the main international standards organization for the worldwide Web.

Cascading style sheets designate how HTML (hypertext markup language)

elements should be displayed, and allow for different styling based on

a number of variables. In the context of responsive design and adaptive

content, the main advancement is the media query. As we described, the

power of the media query is the ability to get more detailed information

about a specific device, and deliver styling and layout elements that are

optimized to that device.

HTML5Another standard maintained by the W3C, HTML5 is the next iteration of HTML

that’ll become the standard for Web development. While it’s still being adopted,

HTML5 is designed to provide a more streamlined coding experience, eliminating

the need for external plugins like Adobe FlashSM. HTML5 will have full CSS3

support and will be device independent, meaning that HTML5 code will work on

all devices without requiring any modification.

6 Ibid


Responsive design, CSS3 and HTML5 all work together to create a new platform

for content. These technological advancements handle the heavy lifting in terms

of how to display content, dynamically adjusting the display based on the physical

characteristics and capabilities of a specific device. What they don’t address,

however, is how to adapt the content itself to the needs of the user on specific

devices. That’s where adaptive content comes in.

The bas ics of adapt ive contentAdaptive content, in its simplest form, is the content marketers version of

“reduce, reuse, recycle.”7 As that label implies, the idea is to create great content

that is easily adapted to various outputs so it’s shareable. Instead of pushing to

create a LOT of content, create high quality content that you can leverage in

more places. Adaptive content is built for that purpose. Karen McGrane outlines

the basic components of adaptive content8:

• Reusable Content—Content that is reusable means it can be used on

multiple platforms and in many formats.

• Structured Content—This is the biggest differentiator of adaptive content.

Instead of writing an article as a single piece, it’s broken into small chunks of

content. Remember the Lego approach we talked about earlier? Instead of

an article you have a headline, a lead, a main image, etc.

• Presentation-Independent Content—The content is raw and

doesn’t contain any formatting. Think of it like the difference

between writing something in Microsoft® Notepad® (plain text)

versus Microsoft Word® (formatted text). Adaptive content is

the Notepad version.

• Meaningful Metadata—Metadata is hidden data that describes

the content for easy interpretation. In other words, it can

be used to “tag” content chunks with certain descriptors

that indicate when it should be displayed. Metadata is the

foundation for delivering personalized content.

• Usable CMS (Content Management System) Interfaces—Proponents of

adaptive content are pushing for new CMS options that are built from

the ground up to manage and distribute adaptive content. Current CMS

systems focus mainly on delivering content in a static, formatted fashion.

Adaptive content requires systems that allow for content chunks that can be

delivered without specific formatting. It should allow content producers to

do everything that’s listed above.

7 Moon, Garrett. “Will Your Content Adapt, Or Will It Become Extinct?” Better at Marketing. Todaymade, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://todaymade.com/blog/adaptive-content/>.



Adapt ive content in act ion: NPR®

Before we go any further, let’s take a minute to look at an example of one of

the most successful implementations of adaptive content in recent times, NPR.

National Public Radio’s Director of Application Development, Daniel Jacobson,

sums up the realization that drove the news organization to fully embrace the

idea of adaptive content:

The digital media world is in the process of dramatic change. For years, the

Internet has been about web sites and browser-based experiences, and the

systems that drove those sites generally matched those experiences. But

now, the portable world is upon us and it is formidable. With the growing

need and ability to be portable comes tremendous opportunity for content

providers. But it also requires substantial changes to their thinking and

their systems. It requires distribution platforms, API’s and other ways to get

the content to where it needs to be. But having an API is not enough. In

order for content providers to take full advantage of these new platforms,

they will need to, first and foremost, embrace one simple philosophy:

COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere).9

NPR realized early on that it would be challenged with the

proliferation of devices and content channels. Although they’re not

a small organization by any means, they did have a relatively small

staff and limited resources. Their COPE philosophy, along with the

API (application programming interface) they developed, were key

strategies for helping them make their content more available and

accessible. Jacobson explains their approach further in an article he

wrote for ProgrammableWeb. He explains that COPE is really the

combination of several related sub-philosophies10:

•Build content management systems, not web publishing tools

•Separate content from display

•Ensure that the content is modular

•Ensure that the content is portable

In essence, he’s outlining the basic components of adaptive content. Write

content in chunks, tag it with metadata but keep it separate from formatting

and display concerns, and make sure that it has structure so it can be used in

many different places. Then load it into a CMS that supports its underlying

structure, and allows the content to be pushed to multiple distribution

9 Jacobson, Daniel. “COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere.” ProgrammableWeb. ProgrammableWeb.com, 13 Oct. 2009. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/>.

10 Ibid


channels. Here’s an example of what that looks like. This picture shows how

the same content is displayed in a smartphone browser, smartphone app, tablet

browser and tablet app:11

Adopting COPE, in combination with their API, has led to a massive increase in

NPR’s page views. Because NPR’s content is infinitely adaptable, they were able

to quickly and easily add new ways to distribute the content to users. In fact their

page view growth increased by over 80% in 12 months.12 Not too shabby. Zach

Brand, Senior Director of Technology for NPR, had this to say about the impact of

their API:

The API has enabled NPR product owners to build specialized apps on

a wide range of platforms and devices, liberating them from being

dependent on custom development to access the content. Through this

process, we built our iPhone and iPad® apps, mobile sites, Android app and

HTML5 site, some of which were turned around in a matter of weeks!13

NPR’s use of adaptive content through COPE and their API has allowed the

organization to spread its content further, and allowed it to focus on creating

great experiences for users on specific platforms, without having to worry about

whether the content will display correctly. It’s made the company faster and more

responsive, and helped it better leverage its primary asset, the content.

I t worked for NPR, but is i t r ight for you?Now that you have a working knowledge of what adaptive content is, how it

works, and how it takes advantage of the latest technological advances to better

leverage content while providing a more personalized experience for users, let’s

talk about how you can evaluate whether it makes sense for your organization.

11 Kruger, Lacey. “Adaptive Content for a Future-Proofed World.” NpENGAGE. NpENGAGE, 19 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://www.npengage.com/mobile/adaptive-content-for-future-proofed-world/>.12 McGrane, Karen. “Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content.” Karen McGrane. Karen McGrane, 4 Sept. 2012.

Web. 08 Apr. 2013. <http://karenmcgrane.com/2012/09/04/adapting-ourselves-to-adaptive-content-video-slides-and-transcript-oh-my/>.

13 Ibid


The single biggest downside to adaptive content is that it’s really new. I mean

really new. It’s so new that if you do research on the topic you won’t find a lot of

published examples out there beyond NPR. In fact, the biggest stumbling block

you’ll come across right now is finding a CMS to support the initiative. There are

a few in development, and some offer elements of adaptive, but it’s not as if you

can just grab one and go. And while you could always develop your own like

NPR did, off-the-shelf solutions will start to appear before too long. However,

if you begin to adopt the principles of adaptive content now you’ll be in an

excellent position to realize the benefits once the technology becomes more

widely available.

Why does adaptive content represent a good investment for your

business? The answer’s fairly straightforward. Adaptive content

will help you become more valuable for your customers. As we’ve

explained, the key to adaptive content is the fact that it’s broken

into smaller chunks, each tagged with metadata that describes how

each chunk is relevant. That opens the door to all kinds of targeting

and personalization possibilities. With adaptive content, you can

create a database of reusable, structured content that can be

delivered to customers in whatever way they see fit. Because of the

metadata, customers get content that’s relevant to what they are

looking for or in line with their preferences.

The other side of the equation is how adaptive content can reduce

the strain on your organizational resources. Content marketing is a key

marketing strategy for many organizations, and the challenge of providing

high quality, relevant content on a consistent basis can become a real strain

on resources for many companies. According to a 2013 report by the Content

Marketing Institute®, 64% of the marketers they surveyed said they are

challenged with producing enough content.14 With the proliferation of content

channels and devices, that challenge is only going to become more and more

formidable. Embracing adaptive content reduces that strain because it allows

you to focus your internal resources on producing better content that you can

leverage more and spread farther. You truly do more with less, which gives you

a higher return on your investment.

14 Content Marketing Institute, and MarketingProfs. B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America. Rep. Brightcove, 24 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/b2bresearch2013cmi-121023151728-phpapp01-1.pdf>.


How to get started with adapt ive contentYou’ve decided to embrace the future and make the move to adaptive content.

Welcome to the world of early adopters. But have no fear, we’ve got some tips to

help you get started with adaptive content. Follow these steps to start building

great things from your ever-expanding content Lego set:

1. Start writing chunks, not blobs

As we’ve discussed, we’ve typically thought of content as blobs—an entire

article or blog post, for example. Those blobs then become HTML code that

displays the content on a Web page, and that HTML includes formatting

code like font, size, color, etc. The first step towards adaptive content is to

stop thinking about your content that way. Time to embrace the chunk.

In order to do that effectively, you need to take some time to consider the

structure that you’re going to utilize for your content. Figure out what

distinct chunks you’re going to need. For example, NPR requires title, short

slug, long description and dateline. Others are optional, but they have

chunks for images, audio, video and bylines.

Another thing that will help you effectively write chunks of content is a

good style guide. Take some time to consider how you want your content

to be organized and how you want it to read. Consider how you want the

content to behave as it moves from desktop to mobile. Set some standards

and document them so everyone has a reference to fall back on.

2. Master metadata

We’ve talked about metadata a little bit already, and to reiterate, it’s

defined as data that describes other data.15 An image, for example, may

contain metadata specifying the size of the image, its resolution, when it

was created, etc.

Metadata lets you programmatically build pages instead

of manually creating one. Remember our Legos analogy?

What that means is your customers show up with their own

set of instructions, and they assemble the content they

want to see from your Lego set. Like we mentioned before,

metadata allows your pages to be dynamic instead of

static. If a customer comes to your site and hits the “Music”

tab for example, all of your content that has metadata

indicating it has to do with music will populate on that

15 “Metadata.” Definition of Metadata. TechTerms.com, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://www.techterms.com/definition/metadata>.


page. You don’t have to keep updating the page with new content, it gets

pulled in programmatically because it’s relevant to that page. That’s the

beauty of metadata.

It will do the same thing in an iPhone app, or an Android app, or

anywhere for that matter. It can be used for a lot of things, but it supports

the delivery of personalized content. That’s key. Similar to content chunks,

the important thing here is to take some time to consider what kinds of

metadata you’ll want to attach to specific chunks. How will you want to

filter or sort content? What kinds of options do you want to give your

customers for specifying content preferences? Think through those things

on the front end of the process to make your adaptive content the

most effective.

3. Separate content from display

This is another mind shift that comes along with adaptive content.

Daniel Jacobson puts it pretty succinctly when he says, “The future

of content management systems is in their ability to capture the

content in a clean, presentation-independent way.”16

Presentation-independent is the key phrase. As you begin to transition to

writing chunks of content, focus on how you utilize the various chunks to

optimize the delivery of information on various platforms. Don’t worry

about how they should look. If you’re using adaptive content correctly

the device will handle that part. You just need to make sure your content

is high quality, relevant, tagged with great metadata, and able to be

assembled like Legos.

4. Get the right tools, or build them

As we’ve already pointed out, this part is the most challenging. If you

were to jump headlong into adaptive content right now, you would have

limited CMS options. However, adaptive content is seen as a compliment

to responsive design, which continues to gain momentum. As HTML5 and

CSS3 mature and become more widely adopted, which will undoubtedly

lead to accelerated adoption of responsive design, adaptive content will

be the next logical enhancement to that ecosystem of adaptive and

accessible information.

As this new view of the role of content continues to evolve, CMS options

that support true adaptive content will start to become more common

and available.



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Conclus ionWe’ve covered a lot of ground here, and it’s probably a good idea to bring this

conversation full circle. To reference another Sting song, arguably one of the best

ways to encapsulate complex technological concepts, this is all about making sure

that someone gets your message in a bottle. Technically, it’s about making sure

that someone gets your message in whatever bottle they choose.

Adaptive content is extremely logical and completely counterintuitive at

the same time. It will force you to think of you content in an entirely different

way, as chunks of important information that retain their informational value

independently as well as in concert with other chunks. It will also push you to

focus on the quality of the content, while it simultaneously blocks you from

concerning yourself with the presentation of the content. The goal is flexible,

reusable, highly valuable content that travels further, getting in front of

more eyeballs.

As the larger digital landscape continues to evolve, putting an emphasis

on creating a responsive experience that adjusts to various screen sizes and

device capabilities, online experiences will become less and less like the static

experiences of print media. Content can’t continue to be developed like it’s

going to be printed in a magazine or embedded in a static PDF. Content needs to

be as flexible as the mediums that display it.

Adaptive content is about building in structure at the content level in order to

free your content from device and platform constraints, giving it the ability to

travel farther and giving you a better return on your investment. Consider how

you could apply the basics of adaptive content to your content marketing strategy

to start to reduce the strain on your internal resources, and to better leverage the

content you’re producing.

Garrett Moon, blogger-in-chief for the “Better at Marketing” blog, puts it this

way, “Content that doesn’t adapt becomes extinct.”17 A bit Darwinian perhaps,

but that about sums it up. Time to adapt.

17 Moon, Garrett. “Will Your Content Adapt, Or Will It Become Extinct?” Better at Marketing. Todaymade, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://todaymade.com/blog/adaptive-content/>.

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