Yes, news sites have a crisis, but the problem is not in aggregators
From the translator: While publishers formulated claims to the aggregators, and Google responded to them, the Associated Press won a lawsuit against one of them. In the meantime, it turned out that the problem was not at all in the aggregators. Read below.
Bill Grueskin (Bill Grueskin) - Dean for Academic Relations Faculty of Journalism, Columbia University (USA). He was the deputy editor-in-chief for the Wall Street Journal news, and before that he was the editor-in-chief of WSJ.com.
We recently witnessed how news sites attacked aggregators for quoting or linking to their traditional (and expensive to produce) product. Content producers believe that this practice destroys their income, and they want to control the use of their content themselves, to earn on it, or to stop all this disgrace in general.
Judge Richard Posner (Richard Posner), one of the wisest bloggers in the world who noticed the dismal state of newspapers and suggested that it might be necessary to start “expanding copyright law to restrict online access to protected materials without the owner’s knowledge or restrict retelling and links to protected materials without the owner’s knowledge ”. In other words, if you quote, pay. If you make links, pay.
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Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Newspaper Plain Dealer, also got involved in the argument. She proposed to impose a 24-hour ban on making profit by aggregators and demanded to share revenues from those sites that use the content of the original news producers.
That was enough for the industry hagiographer Jeff Jarvis to culminate in his blog that Schultz (the wife of the American senator) "should be officially registered as a lobbyist" and then sent a question to senator Sherrod Brown. he is from voting on this issue.
All this serves a great amusement, not answering the most important question. Namely: What is the point in traffic when the business model itself does not work?
We constantly hear about the death of journalism. In fact, not journalism dies, but advertising. Or at least advertising in the form in which we still knew it. The business model, based on advertising as the main source of income in the media, is dying. But in the face of such a big threat to journalism and media in general, it is very easy to lose root and get involved in disputes about links and copyright.
The trouble is that despite the growing traffic of news sites, their pages are full of advertising at a price of no more than $ 1 per thousand impressions. At this price, even a link to Drudge, which will give you 500,000 page impressions, will bring you only $ 500. This money is enough by and large only on the server. And certainly not enough for the salary of journalists and editors. And this is not some kind of secondary part of the production chain.
This happens even on large sites like nytimes.com. Zachary Seward, a sneaky blogger from the Nieman Journalism Lab, recently tracked how a direct link on the Yahoo home page gave the New York Times 9 million unique visitors in 2 hours. At the same time, the link did not bring much profit. A similar thing happened with the newspaper Wichita Eagle Beacon in February of this year. Three million unique visitors received generated just a few thousand dollars from advertising on the pages.
The site paidcontent.org recently cited the results of a survey of more than 2,500 Americans conducted by Harris Interactive Inc., which found that banner advertising, which makes up most of the advertising on news sites, was found to be largely useless. Researchers have found that advertising on TV plays the most value to consumers when making a decision on purchases, then there is advertising in newspapers, then advertising on search sites on the Internet. Banners seemed to be the “most useful” to infinitely small 1% of the total number of respondents, while 46% said that banners were exactly the kind of advertisement that they neglected the most.
In other words, even if you believe that aggregators lead visitors to news sites (it is clear that they actually not only lead, but also lead them), does this play a role at an advertising price of $ 1 per thousand impressions? Of course, it is difficult to hold back, seeing as someone else’s site skims off your work, but is that the case?
In a recent article on CJR, Peter Osnos explores how the Huffington Post newspaper collected tons of traffic on the Sports Illustrated website covering the use of steroids by Alex Rodriguez. Although at the epicenter of the events were exactly Sports Illustrated, not the Huffington Post. Osnos writes: “While the value of online advertising is estimated by the number of visitors, the race over the counter is the most important task.”
In fact, this may not be so true. The value of online advertising should be measured by the degree of involvement, rather than simple counters of visitors, that is, indicators such as time spent on the site, the number of pages viewed.
And indeed, when we are told about “freemium” models (a mixture of paid and free), publishers and editors should think about who they are the most involved readers and what they have in common. When I worked at WSJ.com, I waited for the only day in the year when users spent the most time on the site, and most of the pages were browsing. (Guess what day it is? The answer is at the end of the article). These people were the basis, those who were ready to read us everywhere and always, that is, to update our pages more and more often.
News sites have hard times now, I want to see villains in aggregators, bloggers and other sites. But you can also see the rescuers who send them readers.
In fact, while publishers and editors are learning to work with the audience and make money on it, the aggregators are their saviors. They rather keep them from collapse, than are its cause.
PS The very day of maximum user engagement was Christmas. And those same loyal readers were those who rushed to the site while their children unpacked gifts in the living room. God bless them.
Bill Grueskin (Bill Grueskin) - Dean for Academic Relations Faculty of Journalism, Columbia University (USA). He was the deputy editor-in-chief for the Wall Street Journal news, and before that he was the editor-in-chief of WSJ.com.
We recently witnessed how news sites attacked aggregators for quoting or linking to their traditional (and expensive to produce) product. Content producers believe that this practice destroys their income, and they want to control the use of their content themselves, to earn on it, or to stop all this disgrace in general.
Judge Richard Posner (Richard Posner), one of the wisest bloggers in the world who noticed the dismal state of newspapers and suggested that it might be necessary to start “expanding copyright law to restrict online access to protected materials without the owner’s knowledge or restrict retelling and links to protected materials without the owner’s knowledge ”. In other words, if you quote, pay. If you make links, pay.
')
Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Newspaper Plain Dealer, also got involved in the argument. She proposed to impose a 24-hour ban on making profit by aggregators and demanded to share revenues from those sites that use the content of the original news producers.
That was enough for the industry hagiographer Jeff Jarvis to culminate in his blog that Schultz (the wife of the American senator) "should be officially registered as a lobbyist" and then sent a question to senator Sherrod Brown. he is from voting on this issue.
All this serves a great amusement, not answering the most important question. Namely: What is the point in traffic when the business model itself does not work?
We constantly hear about the death of journalism. In fact, not journalism dies, but advertising. Or at least advertising in the form in which we still knew it. The business model, based on advertising as the main source of income in the media, is dying. But in the face of such a big threat to journalism and media in general, it is very easy to lose root and get involved in disputes about links and copyright.
The trouble is that despite the growing traffic of news sites, their pages are full of advertising at a price of no more than $ 1 per thousand impressions. At this price, even a link to Drudge, which will give you 500,000 page impressions, will bring you only $ 500. This money is enough by and large only on the server. And certainly not enough for the salary of journalists and editors. And this is not some kind of secondary part of the production chain.
This happens even on large sites like nytimes.com. Zachary Seward, a sneaky blogger from the Nieman Journalism Lab, recently tracked how a direct link on the Yahoo home page gave the New York Times 9 million unique visitors in 2 hours. At the same time, the link did not bring much profit. A similar thing happened with the newspaper Wichita Eagle Beacon in February of this year. Three million unique visitors received generated just a few thousand dollars from advertising on the pages.
The site paidcontent.org recently cited the results of a survey of more than 2,500 Americans conducted by Harris Interactive Inc., which found that banner advertising, which makes up most of the advertising on news sites, was found to be largely useless. Researchers have found that advertising on TV plays the most value to consumers when making a decision on purchases, then there is advertising in newspapers, then advertising on search sites on the Internet. Banners seemed to be the “most useful” to infinitely small 1% of the total number of respondents, while 46% said that banners were exactly the kind of advertisement that they neglected the most.
In other words, even if you believe that aggregators lead visitors to news sites (it is clear that they actually not only lead, but also lead them), does this play a role at an advertising price of $ 1 per thousand impressions? Of course, it is difficult to hold back, seeing as someone else’s site skims off your work, but is that the case?
In a recent article on CJR, Peter Osnos explores how the Huffington Post newspaper collected tons of traffic on the Sports Illustrated website covering the use of steroids by Alex Rodriguez. Although at the epicenter of the events were exactly Sports Illustrated, not the Huffington Post. Osnos writes: “While the value of online advertising is estimated by the number of visitors, the race over the counter is the most important task.”
In fact, this may not be so true. The value of online advertising should be measured by the degree of involvement, rather than simple counters of visitors, that is, indicators such as time spent on the site, the number of pages viewed.
And indeed, when we are told about “freemium” models (a mixture of paid and free), publishers and editors should think about who they are the most involved readers and what they have in common. When I worked at WSJ.com, I waited for the only day in the year when users spent the most time on the site, and most of the pages were browsing. (Guess what day it is? The answer is at the end of the article). These people were the basis, those who were ready to read us everywhere and always, that is, to update our pages more and more often.
News sites have hard times now, I want to see villains in aggregators, bloggers and other sites. But you can also see the rescuers who send them readers.
In fact, while publishers and editors are learning to work with the audience and make money on it, the aggregators are their saviors. They rather keep them from collapse, than are its cause.
PS The very day of maximum user engagement was Christmas. And those same loyal readers were those who rushed to the site while their children unpacked gifts in the living room. God bless them.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/288178/
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