Commercial airlines flew a record number of flights this week.

This breaking news didn’t originate on any of the world’s major media, however, it was published by the website Flightradar24.

It’s one small example of a growing trend that is changing the landscape for media and marketing.

This story starts with two Swedish airline enthusiasts who set up a system to track planes. Flightradar24 crowdsources data from a network of volunteers with 35,000 ADS-B receivers.

Because FlightRadar24 doesn’t rely on airlines or airports, the information is proprietary and independent.

In the past, companies would seek publicity by putting out a press release or having a PR agency pitch a reporter to write a story.

Increasingly, companies now publish the news themselves.

The brand-building strategy works especially well for smaller companies with unique data. Flightradar24 posts on its website, a newsletter and on Twitter.

What Flightradar24 and others are figuring out is that educational and entertaining social media posts can be better advertising than advertising.

The company has broken news ranging from this week’s record 134,386 commercial flights on July 6th to the existence of unusual flight activity in Russia during a recent coup attempt.

Yesterday, a post flagged delays in Amsterdam and how storms in the New York area disproportionately impacted United Airlines which has a hub there.

Expect to see more and more companies use data to become content creators.

It’s one thing to have the data, of course, it’s another to know how to use it to tell compelling stories.

My company, Principals Media, has been working with several startups to take advantage of this opportunity. My DMs are open if you are interested in discussing how we could help.