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No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily ad blocked versions. They all had perfectly good reasons to not have to deal

by ngold 6y ago

No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily ad blocked versions. They all had perfectly good reasons to not have to deal with the headache of losing money. But that would require keeping the ad sales team they had on board and making a similiar product online. But everyone got scared and lazy and saw a one quarter jump by dumping a bunch of staff.

searchableguy 6y ago
There is already a web monetization api in the work - https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
- nness 6y ago
  Reminds me of the ill-fated "Beanz" of 2001...
ketzu 6y ago
Did the prices for ads not dramatically drop over time? To me, it feels like it was just market forces driving those decisions. They could have kept the ad sales team and fewer ads, but that doesn't mean that would have worked out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- user5994461 6y ago
  Don't think so. Ads should be a good dollar per thousand views. Maybe 3 dollar for videos. Well known newspaper may be able to get more given their reputation and how many ads they plaster per page. I think it's the economy of scale that's difficult to achieve. An employee has to bring in thousands of dollar just to pay for own salary, that's millions of views per month. The costs and revenues don't add up to sustain a large company and it has to spam (low quality) content to survive.
mc32 6y ago
The other “half” was classified ads though. Craigslist killed that and they had no answer to that. In retrospect maybe as an industry they could have launched something similar with a better UI and given it out for free and as they gained traction as premium features... but there’s no going back.
save_ferris 6y ago
> No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily blocked ad versions Sure they did. The market 100% absolutely drove papers to transition to digital ads. If everyone in an industry makes the same change, how can you argue that said change wasn’t demanded by the market? To argue that they got lazy completely ignores the economic forces that have motivated print publications over the last 30 years. Scared? Sure. Lazy? Spend some time in a newsroom and see for yourself how desperate they are. Newspapers used to have two primary sources of income: subscriptions and advertising. Subscriptions brought in pretty stable income while advertising brought in higher margins with increased variability. The two were also deeply linked: advertising rates were set largely on the amount of reach that a paper had through its distribution. Papers with higher distribution could command higher advertising fees. Then the internet came along and hollowed out the subscription base for publications around the country. Income streams for papers decreased and became less stable at the same time. As subscriptions dropped, so did the paper’s ability to advertise. To supplement income shortfalls and try to figure out how to exists in the digital age, papers started adapting their business models for the internet. They saw decades of declining print advertising revenues, driven largely by a shift towards cheap and targeted online advertising.
xeromal 6y ago
The arrogance of some people online is astounding.

by ngold 6y ago

searchableguy 6y ago

There is already a web monetization api in the work - https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/

nness 6y ago
Reminds me of the ill-fated "Beanz" of 2001...

ketzu 6y ago

Did the prices for ads not dramatically drop over time? To me, it feels like it was just market forces driving those decisions. They could have kept the ad sales team and fewer ads, but that doesn't mean that would have worked out.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
user5994461 6y ago
Don't think so. Ads should be a good dollar per thousand views. Maybe 3 dollar for videos. Well known newspaper may be able to get more given their reputation and how many ads they plaster per page. I think it's the economy of scale that's difficult to achieve. An employee has to bring in thousands of dollar just to pay for own salary, that's millions of views per month. The costs and revenues don't add up to sustain a large company and it has to spam (low quality) content to survive.

mc32 6y ago

The other “half” was classified ads though. Craigslist killed that and they had no answer to that. In retrospect maybe as an industry they could have launched something similar with a better UI and given it out for free and as they gained traction as premium features... but there’s no going back.

save_ferris 6y ago

> No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily blocked ad versions Sure they did. The market 100% absolutely drove papers to transition to digital ads. If everyone in an industry makes the same change, how can you argue that said change wasn’t demanded by the market? To argue that they got lazy completely ignores the economic forces that have motivated print publications over the last 30 years. Scared? Sure. Lazy? Spend some time in a newsroom and see for yourself how desperate they are. Newspapers used to have two primary sources of income: subscriptions and advertising. Subscriptions brought in pretty stable income while advertising brought in higher margins with increased variability. The two were also deeply linked: advertising rates were set largely on the amount of reach that a paper had through its distribution. Papers with higher distribution could command higher advertising fees. Then the internet came along and hollowed out the subscription base for publications around the country. Income streams for papers decreased and became less stable at the same time. As subscriptions dropped, so did the paper’s ability to advertise. To supplement income shortfalls and try to figure out how to exists in the digital age, papers started adapting their business models for the internet. They saw decades of declining print advertising revenues, driven largely by a shift towards cheap and targeted online advertising.

xeromal 6y ago

The arrogance of some people online is astounding.