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The key to this are really online advertising prices. Mind that 2009 – not that long ago and when online news were already much a thing, but paywalls were commo

The key to this are really online advertising prices. Mind that 2009 – not that long ago and when online news were already much a thing, but paywalls were commonly not – was the all-time high in news paper revenues. From which follows: 1) Get advertising prices up again, this may also revitalise private publishing (e.g., the nowadays mostly vacant blog sphere, which has been extradited to the walled-garden infrastructure of video portals for the better part). 2) At the same time, have restrictions on the visual distraction of those adds (preferably static images) and, whenever possible, integrate them on the originating host/server, to de-incentivise ad-blockers. 3) Voilà, free news for everyone with thriving revenues, and, as a bonus, a blooming online publishing landscape.

smhenderson 5y ago
have restrictions on the visual distraction of those adds (preferably static images) My worry is that the height of the revenue you speak of in 2009 was because of stuff like this. That the invasive nature of the ads was what impressed ad-buyers so much and caused such a huge spend in the first place. That, coupled with the fact that online advertising was still fairly new and everyone thought it would be so much more effective than traditional advertising, mostly because of how flashy and unavoidable it could be.
dfxm12 5y ago
It looks like the decline of newspapers happened shortly after that [0]. 2009 was the year after a very newsworthy presidential election, so maybe there is some hope. However, in general, there's way more competition today from cable news, video sites like YT, and non-newspaper websites, that are either ad or reader supported. People are also not really buying physical papers anymore, either. You also can't just handwave "get advertising prices up". How are you going to convince advertisers to pay more? 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Performance_in_the_market_(2000%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Performa... ETA: I'm also having a hard time finding anything that suggests 2009 was a good year for newspapers. I can only find stories like this in the 2009 timeframe: US newspaper ad revenue down 27% in 2009 - https://phys.org/news/2010-03-newspaper-ad-revenue-naa.html https://phys.org/news/2010-03-newspaper-ad-revenue-naa.html U.S. Newspaper Circulation Falls More Than 10% - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.ht...
- masswerk 5y ago
  Regarding prices: There is really no "natural" price, but the one that can sustain the entity providing the context, space and publishing reach. (Clearly, this is not the case at the moment.) In contrast, the collateral damage of not being able to afford tons of Google Adsense impact for less than a meal is probably tiny in comparison. (Especially, in a scenario, where your recipe blog may provide you with revenues worth a living, once established, which may well justify a small investment.) IMHO, the rational behind online advertising is completely off. – And, we may observe, this is partly due to newspapers outsourcing their control over prices together with their advertising departments, in favor of handing their powers over to the various ad provider networks. (We may also observe that it was then these networks, who radically devalued the context/quality and reach parts in the equation in favor of ad targeting, which was entirely in their domain of power.)

smhenderson 5y ago

have restrictions on the visual distraction of those adds (preferably static images) My worry is that the height of the revenue you speak of in 2009 was because of stuff like this. That the invasive nature of the ads was what impressed ad-buyers so much and caused such a huge spend in the first place. That, coupled with the fact that online advertising was still fairly new and everyone thought it would be so much more effective than traditional advertising, mostly because of how flashy and unavoidable it could be.

dfxm12 5y ago

It looks like the decline of newspapers happened shortly after that [0]. 2009 was the year after a very newsworthy presidential election, so maybe there is some hope. However, in general, there's way more competition today from cable news, video sites like YT, and non-newspaper websites, that are either ad or reader supported. People are also not really buying physical papers anymore, either. You also can't just handwave "get advertising prices up". How are you going to convince advertisers to pay more? 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Performance_in_the_market_(2000%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#Performa... ETA: I'm also having a hard time finding anything that suggests 2009 was a good year for newspapers. I can only find stories like this in the 2009 timeframe: US newspaper ad revenue down 27% in 2009 - https://phys.org/news/2010-03-newspaper-ad-revenue-naa.html https://phys.org/news/2010-03-newspaper-ad-revenue-naa.html U.S. Newspaper Circulation Falls More Than 10% - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/media/27audit.ht...

masswerk 5y ago
Regarding prices: There is really no "natural" price, but the one that can sustain the entity providing the context, space and publishing reach. (Clearly, this is not the case at the moment.) In contrast, the collateral damage of not being able to afford tons of Google Adsense impact for less than a meal is probably tiny in comparison. (Especially, in a scenario, where your recipe blog may provide you with revenues worth a living, once established, which may well justify a small investment.) IMHO, the rational behind online advertising is completely off. – And, we may observe, this is partly due to newspapers outsourcing their control over prices together with their advertising departments, in favor of handing their powers over to the various ad provider networks. (We may also observe that it was then these networks, who radically devalued the context/quality and reach parts in the equation in favor of ad targeting, which was entirely in their domain of power.)