6 ms·

That looks fantastic, I would actually read USA Today if this lean site sticks around. If they want to monetize, publishers should control their own generic ad

by sireat 8y ago

That looks fantastic, I would actually read USA Today if this lean site sticks around. If they want to monetize, publishers should control their own generic ad inventory (like they used to in old pre internet days) and ask for opt-in if you want customization. Easy on paper but hard in reality.

rdlecler1 8y ago
I call BS on this. You’re going to read a publication because of the relevance and quality of the content. USA Today Europe will no longer have metrics to sell advertising which may then force them to dial back on their writers salaries.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  You're right that people don't read publications because of the layout, it's all about the content. Still it's hard to deny that the (presumably temporary) EU site is a much nicer experience. It's certainly faster. They have plenty of metrics on the ads still, just not on the users. It's not going to be an issue to see how often an ad is shown, they just don't know if it's relevant to the reader. The good thing is that no they have a way of measuring the effectiveness of targetted ads, because the entire EU is available as a control group. For a newspaper, like USA Today, I honestly doubt that targetted ads convert much better than random ones. EDIT: Random or based on the content of the article.
- _jal 8y ago
  This is, I think, a great illustration of the problems with a lot of economic reasoning. Sure, maybe that's exactly what would happen, but changing one variable in a toy model is not proof that it will. There are successful news sites that do just fine without becoming relentless clickbait optimization mills - and in fact, those are exactly the sites I tend to read. Two examples, so we're talking about something specific: talkingpointsmemo.com and techdirt.com are both daily reads for me. TPM is, for want of a better term, the more advertiser-friendly of the two, but it intentionally works fine with ad blockers. Techdirt is probably well-known to most folks here. The other commonality is that both of them work hard to not be enslaved by the adtech surveillance machine - they both have non-ad revenue streams. And I think that is the real trick missed by overly simple reasoning - even when it is correct (and it is, frequently), it obscures more than it helps. And somewhat more nebulously, I think it trains people into a way of thinking that blinds them to options. After all, if you "know" you can't reduce your surveillance metrics below industry-average intrusiveness, you won't look at possibilities involving doing so. Instead, you'd look at additional non-ad revenue as "more and better" and do both - thereby losing me as a potential customer. Is that a good tradeoff? I don't know - and that's the point. These are much more complicated questions than econ 101 will guide you through.
  - toyg 8y ago
    > it trains people into a way of thinking that blinds them to options. It's also a dilemma of sorts. If you stop running ads, then there is one less outlet for them, which means rates for all the other outlets are likely to grow. If enough people do it, the few players left will make very good business. Would you rather move out, risking your livelihood on experimental business models, or stay in with the devil you know, ensuring nobody is going to do better than you?
    - tripzilch 8y ago
      To demonstrate the way it blinds people to options: What you mean is running 3rd party ads via ad networks. It's perfectly feasible to show an image that links to some advertiser's site for a negotiated fee. This is the equivalent of a paper magazine with advertisements. Not renting out injection points to executing whatever foreign code on their visitor's devices. My ad blocker won't even block it (well not by default, and only as long as you play nice, it's not like online advertising has any goodwill left over, or ever acted to deserve it).
oldcynic 8y ago
"This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European Union. We do identify EU internet protocol (IP) addresses for the purpose of determining whether to direct you to USA TODAY NETWORK’s EU Experience. This site provides news and information of USA TODAY NETWORK. We hope you enjoy the site." Colour me impressed. I sincerely hope it catches on.
- maushu 8y ago
  I was surprised when my adblocker didn't bleep once. This is like looking what the internet could be. It could've been great.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Of course, that vision of what the internet could be never really answered the question of where the money was coming from to pay for the servers that are delivering that content.
    - rock_hard 8y ago
      Or how to pay the people who create the content
      - chrshawkes 8y ago
        It seems many people think content worth enjoying is somehow created and delivered freely.
        Spooky23 8y ago
        It always was. In the 90s, the N.Y. Times was $1 in my city and the local paper was $0.30. That covered paper, distribution and ink. The ads paid for it, and I think the ads were more effective. IMO online ads are mostly fraud and bullshit.
class4behavior 8y ago
Apparently, WashPo prefers a more coercive method: https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/ Either pay or sell yourself. A gamble they might lose if people just stop sharing and click Washpo articles, but a possible route if others follow suit. Meanwhile, NPR goes more hardcore than even USA Today: https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org I wonder, does that mean EU users are just a nuisance costing traffic, or that all graphics are tracking visitors?
- craigsmansion 8y ago
  What it means for me personally is that The Washinton Post as well as the NPR can't be relied upon for reporting news, since they are apparently unable to even marginally interpret a legal document aiming for clarity and instead channel their incompetence into snarky behaviour that still isn't compliant with the GDPR. To wit (washpo): "You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads" Where is the "No I don't. Just give me regular/random ads" button? and, "Premium EU subscription" "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking" There's nothing specifically EU about that, in fact, it sounds like a good service to offer to all your readers. But still, there's a big difference between on-site advertising and third-party ad tracking, and that difference is at the heart of the GDPR. A half decent journalist could have figured that out. Maybe that's their real problem. But most importantly, and frighteningly, instead of these two stunts being knee-jerk backlash reactions, maybe they're serious and most data-peddlers aren't shady figures in smoke-filled backrooms, but simply the fourth estate en large.
  - derrikcurran 8y ago
    What's NPR doing wrong? Are they redirecting to the text-only version for EU IPs or something?
    - Avery3R 8y ago
      I looked at it with an EU proxy, it gives you the choice to either consent or go to the text-only version.
wmeredith 8y ago
How exactly would one expect this to stick around with no way to monetize it?
- tripzilch 8y ago
  Why exactly would you want it to stick around if it can't sustain itself without selling my personal data to shady 3rd party ad networks? Just because it's been useful doesn't give it some unqualified right to exist.
jon__k 8y ago
Too late. It now redirects to http://www.usatoday.com http://www.usatoday.com with lots of cookie trackers.

by sireat 8y ago

rdlecler1 8y ago

I call BS on this. You’re going to read a publication because of the relevance and quality of the content. USA Today Europe will no longer have metrics to sell advertising which may then force them to dial back on their writers salaries.

mrweasel 8y ago
You're right that people don't read publications because of the layout, it's all about the content. Still it's hard to deny that the (presumably temporary) EU site is a much nicer experience. It's certainly faster. They have plenty of metrics on the ads still, just not on the users. It's not going to be an issue to see how often an ad is shown, they just don't know if it's relevant to the reader. The good thing is that no they have a way of measuring the effectiveness of targetted ads, because the entire EU is available as a control group. For a newspaper, like USA Today, I honestly doubt that targetted ads convert much better than random ones. EDIT: Random or based on the content of the article.
_jal 8y ago
This is, I think, a great illustration of the problems with a lot of economic reasoning. Sure, maybe that's exactly what would happen, but changing one variable in a toy model is not proof that it will. There are successful news sites that do just fine without becoming relentless clickbait optimization mills - and in fact, those are exactly the sites I tend to read. Two examples, so we're talking about something specific: talkingpointsmemo.com and techdirt.com are both daily reads for me. TPM is, for want of a better term, the more advertiser-friendly of the two, but it intentionally works fine with ad blockers. Techdirt is probably well-known to most folks here. The other commonality is that both of them work hard to not be enslaved by the adtech surveillance machine - they both have non-ad revenue streams. And I think that is the real trick missed by overly simple reasoning - even when it is correct (and it is, frequently), it obscures more than it helps. And somewhat more nebulously, I think it trains people into a way of thinking that blinds them to options. After all, if you "know" you can't reduce your surveillance metrics below industry-average intrusiveness, you won't look at possibilities involving doing so. Instead, you'd look at additional non-ad revenue as "more and better" and do both - thereby losing me as a potential customer. Is that a good tradeoff? I don't know - and that's the point. These are much more complicated questions than econ 101 will guide you through.
- toyg 8y ago
  > it trains people into a way of thinking that blinds them to options. It's also a dilemma of sorts. If you stop running ads, then there is one less outlet for them, which means rates for all the other outlets are likely to grow. If enough people do it, the few players left will make very good business. Would you rather move out, risking your livelihood on experimental business models, or stay in with the devil you know, ensuring nobody is going to do better than you?
  - tripzilch 8y ago
    To demonstrate the way it blinds people to options: What you mean is running 3rd party ads via ad networks. It's perfectly feasible to show an image that links to some advertiser's site for a negotiated fee. This is the equivalent of a paper magazine with advertisements. Not renting out injection points to executing whatever foreign code on their visitor's devices. My ad blocker won't even block it (well not by default, and only as long as you play nice, it's not like online advertising has any goodwill left over, or ever acted to deserve it).

oldcynic 8y ago

"This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European Union. We do identify EU internet protocol (IP) addresses for the purpose of determining whether to direct you to USA TODAY NETWORK’s EU Experience. This site provides news and information of USA TODAY NETWORK. We hope you enjoy the site." Colour me impressed. I sincerely hope it catches on.

maushu 8y ago
I was surprised when my adblocker didn't bleep once. This is like looking what the internet could be. It could've been great.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Of course, that vision of what the internet could be never really answered the question of where the money was coming from to pay for the servers that are delivering that content.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    Or how to pay the people who create the content
    - chrshawkes 8y ago
      It seems many people think content worth enjoying is somehow created and delivered freely.
      - Spooky23 8y ago
        It always was. In the 90s, the N.Y. Times was $1 in my city and the local paper was $0.30. That covered paper, distribution and ink. The ads paid for it, and I think the ads were more effective. IMO online ads are mostly fraud and bullshit.

class4behavior 8y ago

Apparently, WashPo prefers a more coercive method: https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/ Either pay or sell yourself. A gamble they might lose if people just stop sharing and click Washpo articles, but a possible route if others follow suit. Meanwhile, NPR goes more hardcore than even USA Today: https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org I wonder, does that mean EU users are just a nuisance costing traffic, or that all graphics are tracking visitors?

craigsmansion 8y ago
What it means for me personally is that The Washinton Post as well as the NPR can't be relied upon for reporting news, since they are apparently unable to even marginally interpret a legal document aiming for clarity and instead channel their incompetence into snarky behaviour that still isn't compliant with the GDPR. To wit (washpo): "You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads" Where is the "No I don't. Just give me regular/random ads" button? and, "Premium EU subscription" "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking" There's nothing specifically EU about that, in fact, it sounds like a good service to offer to all your readers. But still, there's a big difference between on-site advertising and third-party ad tracking, and that difference is at the heart of the GDPR. A half decent journalist could have figured that out. Maybe that's their real problem. But most importantly, and frighteningly, instead of these two stunts being knee-jerk backlash reactions, maybe they're serious and most data-peddlers aren't shady figures in smoke-filled backrooms, but simply the fourth estate en large.
- derrikcurran 8y ago
  What's NPR doing wrong? Are they redirecting to the text-only version for EU IPs or something?
  - Avery3R 8y ago
    I looked at it with an EU proxy, it gives you the choice to either consent or go to the text-only version.

wmeredith 8y ago

How exactly would one expect this to stick around with no way to monetize it?

tripzilch 8y ago
Why exactly would you want it to stick around if it can't sustain itself without selling my personal data to shady 3rd party ad networks? Just because it's been useful doesn't give it some unqualified right to exist.

jon__k 8y ago

Too late. It now redirects to http://www.usatoday.com http://www.usatoday.com with lots of cookie trackers.