The exclusive arrangement means they can license SCMP material without negotiating directly
In October 2020, Veritone — a company that wagers artificial intelligence can become the connective tissue between content and creator — secured exclusive rights to distribute South China Morning Post video across North America. The agreement is less about a single deal than about a recurring human ambition: to make the world's knowledge findable, and in doing so, to make that findability itself a business. For media organizations navigating an era of accelerating digital demand, the question Veritone is quietly answering is whether curation, powered by machine intelligence, can replace the friction of negotiation.
- Veritone's AI content library risks becoming an elegant solution in search of material — the SCMP deal is a direct answer to that vulnerability.
- Exclusive North American distribution rights mean competitors cannot simply replicate the arrangement, giving Veritone a rare moat in a crowded media-tech landscape.
- The South China Morning Post's Alibaba ownership and decades of Asian coverage hand North American outlets a window into reporting they lack the infrastructure to produce themselves.
- With streaming platforms and social channels hungry for international footage in late 2020, the timing amplifies the deal's potential value beyond its contractual terms.
- The real test is monetization — whether enough creators and broadcasters will pay for curated access to justify the exclusivity premium Veritone is betting on.
Veritone, a publicly traded AI company, has struck an exclusive agreement to distribute South China Morning Post video content across North America — gaining access to both the publication's deep archive and its ongoing production. The deal is a calculated move to solve one of Veritone's most pressing challenges: a content library is only as valuable as what it contains.
The company's AI technology is built to make licensed material discoverable — tagging footage, categorizing stories, and surfacing relevant content for creators who need it. But that technology requires substantial material to work on. The SCMP partnership delivers thousands of hours of professional video journalism from one of Asia's most respected English-language outlets, owned by Alibaba since 2015, covering business, politics, and culture that North American organizations rarely produce themselves.
For Veritone's clients — broadcasters, digital creators, media organizations — the exclusive arrangement removes the friction of negotiating directly with the Post. For Veritone, it represents a vision of AI as infrastructure: lower the barriers for smaller producers to access international content, and the technology becomes indispensable rather than incidental.
The exclusivity clause signals that Veritone views this as a competitive advantage worth protecting. If the SCMP model proves profitable, it could become a template for similar agreements with other international news sources — gradually assembling a library that grows harder for rivals to replicate. Whether that ambition translates into meaningful revenue remains the open question the market will be watching.
Veritone, a publicly traded artificial intelligence company, has secured exclusive rights to distribute video content from the South China Morning Post across North America. The deal grants Veritone access to both the SCMP's existing archive and its ongoing video production, positioning the company to offer clients a deeper reservoir of news material sourced from one of Asia's most established English-language publications.
The agreement represents a deliberate expansion of Veritone's strategy to build out what it calls an AI-powered content library—a collection of licensed material that the company can make available to content creators, broadcasters, and media organizations looking to source footage and stories. By securing exclusive North American distribution rights to SCMP's catalog, Veritone is betting that news organizations and digital creators will pay for curated, searchable access to international content that would otherwise require direct licensing negotiations with the Post itself.
For Veritone, the partnership addresses a core business challenge: building a library valuable enough that customers will subscribe to it. The company's AI technology is designed to make that content discoverable—tagging, categorizing, and surfacing relevant material based on what creators are looking for. Without substantial content to index and organize, the technology has limited utility. The SCMP deal provides thousands of hours of professional video journalism to feed into that system.
The South China Morning Post, owned by Alibaba since 2015, brings significant credibility to the arrangement. The publication has been producing video content for decades and maintains a substantial archive. Its coverage of Asian business, politics, and culture gives North American media organizations access to reporting they might otherwise struggle to obtain or produce themselves. For Veritone's clients, the exclusive arrangement means they can license SCMP material without negotiating directly with the publication.
The timing of the announcement, in October 2020, came as media companies were accelerating their digital transformation and seeking new sources of video content to feed streaming platforms and social media channels. Veritone positioned the deal as part of a broader vision: using artificial intelligence to connect content creators with material that would help them reach new audiences. The company argued that by making international news footage more accessible and searchable, it was lowering barriers for smaller producers and outlets to compete with larger media organizations.
What remains to be seen is how aggressively Veritone can monetize the arrangement and whether similar deals with other major news organizations will follow. The exclusivity clause suggests the company views this as a competitive advantage worth protecting, at least in the near term. If the SCMP partnership proves profitable and attracts significant customer interest, it could become a template for Veritone to pursue comparable agreements with other international news sources, gradually building a library that becomes difficult for competitors to replicate.
Citas Notables
The deal is a significant milestone in Veritone's strategy to expand the global reach of its AI-powered content library and enable content creators to engage with new and existing audiences through highly relevant content— Veritone (company statement)
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a news archive matter to an AI company? What's the actual business here?
The archive is the raw material. Veritone's technology is built to search, tag, and organize video content so creators can find what they need instantly. Without content to organize, the AI has nothing to do. SCMP gives them thousands of hours to work with.
So they're not making the news themselves—they're licensing other people's news and reselling access?
Exactly. They're a middleman with a technology layer. Instead of a producer calling SCMP directly to negotiate licensing, they call Veritone, search their library, and get what they need faster and cheaper.
Why would SCMP agree to this? Don't they lose direct relationships with customers?
They get a revenue stream without having to build their own distribution infrastructure. Veritone handles the sales, the licensing, the customer service. SCMP just gets paid.
And the exclusivity clause—what does that protect?
It keeps competitors from licensing the same SCMP content in North America. If Veritone can be the only place to get SCMP material on this continent, customers have to come to them.
What's the risk if this doesn't work?
Veritone spent resources and money on a deal that might not generate enough licensing revenue to justify it. And they've committed to distributing content that might not be what their customers actually want to license.