Internet publications are at the stage of struggle for advertisers and traffic

Competition in the market of Internet publications has always been extremely high, but in recent months the situation has become disastrous for many of them. For example, the Mashable website with the latest investment of $ 15 million dismissed 30 people, the Salon publication announced new budget cuts and even the BuzzFeed management began to think about additional monetization methods in order to avoid conflict with investors.

Market Changes

There are several reasons behind the recent problems in the market - the unpredictability of the advertising market and the drop in traffic for web versions of sites. In addition, the sites faced a number of difficulties lately - from ad blockers to automated traffic acquisition tools. And the tendency to move from viewing content on websites towards the use of mobile applications and social networks has evolved from a trend into a reality.
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“Every moment people begin to feel what it is like not to control their own destiny,” co-founders Salon Scott Rosenberg, who left the company in 2007, shared with The New York Times reporters.

Advertisers prefer advertising in social networks

It is the interests of the audience that have become the main catalyst for changing the market - now social networks and applications are among the preferred tools for consuming information, instead of the main pages of websites. As a result, the main page of sites has ceased to exist for the vast majority of the audience for whom the material opened from the Facebook news feed becomes the entry point.

Against the background of this trend, advertisers find it inappropriate to purchase ads from a dozen sites, when you can purchase targeted traffic directly on Facebook or Google

“Advertisers have adjusted spending. Now, from every dollar, 85 cents is spent on Google or Facebook, ”said Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Novak.

During the last developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed Facebook’s desire to keep people at the expense of developing new trends. One of these was the broadcast video in real time - a niche, which many have long wanted to enter.

Parse.ly analysts also point out that Facebook now plays a key role for site owners, as almost 40% of all web traffic comes from its share.

As a result, the publications are trying to find a new approach - Mashable invests in various directions in an attempt to find an effective strategy for monetizing the project. It is noteworthy that Instant Article, presented on Facebook relatively recently, is regarded by some as one of the convenient methods of integrating content into a social network without potential loss of advertising revenue. But this approach will not be fatal for most publications because of the actual merger with Facebook and the potential limitations of the social network, remains open.