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Author | Topic: What Is Australia's Problem With News in Google and Facebook | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Used to be that waiting rooms (for doctors, dentists, optometrists, hair styling salons, etc.) would often have a copy of that day's local paper, but our local paper moved to digital-only last year, so local waiting rooms no longer have the local paper (they still have magazines). You would also see the newspaper for sale at newsstands and markets and stand-alone boxes. It used to have a tangible local presence in our area, but no more. If you're not a paid digital subscriber then it's invisible.
They still print a Sunday paper. --Percy
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: It is clearly a fact that casual visitors, unwilling to take out subscriptions will no longer visit the site. That is exactly what I have done with NYT and WaPo.
quote: None of which offers any real evidence that web views have not declined as a consequence. If they didn’t get casual visits from Facebook users or Google searches I would be surprised (and it would also be a relevant point in the discussion). And I hardly think that every one of those casual visitors would have taken out a paid subscription.
quote: I think that it is quite clear that many do, and the fact that ads are not paying well - for them - is a big part of that. That is one of the underlying issues - ad spending online is heavily dominated by Google and Facebook, who receive a very large proportion of it.
quote: It is the continued insistence that I said it, despite repeated corrections which is the issue. An honest mistake I can accept, but we’ve gone a long way past the point where that is a possibility,
quote: It is certain that it is irrelevant, since the point was only about the finances. I don’t even agree that subscriptions make the newspaper a destination site - at least no more of one than it already is (Does my regular reading of the BBC News site make it a destination site? Links to WaPo and NYT are common in my reading - why would subscriptions make them more of a destination site when they reduce the number of people following those links?)
quote: What I mean, of course, is that it is a way around the issue of search, undercutting your objection.
quote: Thank you for making it clear that your assertion has nothing to do with my point. My whole point is about financing. Casual visitors generally don’t provide sufficient income, hence newspapers prefer subscriptions. And if they can’t get subscriptions to work they will have to look for other ways, whether the site is self-contained or not doesn’t matter. (I also note that a destination site is generally expected to contain substantial links to other resources - which is a reliance on other sites).
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
PaulK writes: quote:It is clearly a fact that casual visitors, unwilling to take out subscriptions will no longer visit the site. That is exactly what I have done with NYT and WaPo. Very true. That pretty much describes my own behavior. I think I already mentioned that I tell Google not to list links to paywall news sites that I don't subscribe to.
quote: None of which offers any real evidence that web views have not declined as a consequence. I don't know whether overall web traffic to news sites is increasing or decreasing, and I wasn't trying to say anything about that. I mentioned the Globe as an example of a site with so much increasing traffic that their overall paid circulation has increased over the past few years. I also mentioned the example of our own local paper and would guess that many local outlets are not seeing sufficient growth in web traffic to make up for declines in print circulation. Also, some outlets have both text and video content and have a significant presence outside the web, like CNN and Fox News, complicating the equation.
If they didn’t get casual visits from Facebook users or Google searches I would be surprised (and it would also be a relevant point in the discussion). And I hardly think that every one of those casual visitors would have taken out a paid subscription. I couldn't develop a clear picture of what you were saying here. If it seems an important point then could you please clarify?
quote: I think that it is quite clear that many do, and the fact that ads are not paying well - for them - is a big part of that. I think it would be more accurate to say that many wish the subscription model was the answer to their financial problems, but it isn't as simple as that. Any news outlet considering the future sees a lot of uncertainty.
That is one of the underlying issues - ad spending online is heavily dominated by Google and Facebook, who receive a very large proportion of it. I'm not sure how much is "a very large proportion," but here are some figures. According to Wikipedia, Google and Facebook control a little less than 60% of online ad space, but that doesn't mean they get 60% of the revenue. Much of Google's ad income comes from their AdSense platform which keeps 32% of the income for itself and gives 68% to the website running the ad. Why do you think that part of Google's income from AdSense ads at EvC Forum (if we ran any) should be given to the Australian news media? What does Google's success at online advertising have to do with the news media? Why couldn't all advertising platforms, such as TV stations, cable stations, billboards, ads on transportation, mailing advertising, etc., claim that Google and Facebook are making so much more than them at advertising that they deserve a share of it? The Australian model is unsustainable anyway because it would bankrupt Google and Facebook if the whole world were to adopt it, something they must already understand in their souls, and I can only believe that their capitulation is actually a holding action while they figure out some more sustainable solution.
quote: It is the continued insistence that I said it, despite repeated corrections which is the issue. An honest mistake I can accept, but we’ve gone a long way past the point where that is a possibility, But you did say that "newspapers generally don't want to rely on visitors arriving via links." I thought this was wrong and so I disagreed and explained why. Several times. Perhaps if you meant something else you should own up to a lack of clarity.
quote: It is certain that it is irrelevant, since the point was only about the finances. I think in your mind that your words contained a focus and precision that did not in reality exist.
I don’t even agree that subscriptions make the newspaper a destination site - at least no more of one than it already is (Does my regular reading of the BBC News site make it a destination site?). Links to WaPo and NYT are common in my reading - why would subscriptions make them more of a destination site when they reduce the number of people following those links?) It was your statement that news outlets don't want to rely on outside links that caused me to use the term "destination site". A news site to which no one links could only be a destination site, for there would be no way other than from within the site to reach their articles.
quote: What I mean, of course, is that it is a way around the issue of search, undercutting your objection. If you think search engine links benefit paywall news sites then why did you say they don't want to rely on them?
quote: Thank you for making it clear that your assertion has nothing to do with my point. My whole point is about financing. Again, I think you see in your words a precision that is simply not there.
Casual visitors generally don’t provide sufficient income, hence newspapers prefer subscriptions. You said this earlier and the answer is the same. News sites might all wish that subscriptions were the answer, but they wouldn't as a group prefer subscriptions when many know it wouldn't work for them and many others are uncertain. If they actually preferred subscriptions as a group then there would already be many fewer free news sites out there. But they understand that the subscription model has the potential for stifling web traffic, starving a website of hits. Understanding this tradeoff they likely make every effort to try to identify the impact before making a decision about switching to a subscription model.
And if they can’t get subscriptions to work they will have to look for other ways, whether the site is self-contained or not doesn’t matter. Agreed.
(I also note that a destination site is generally expected to contain substantial links to other resources - which is a reliance on other sites). Links into a site from the outside are not the same thing as links from inside a site to other websites, but yes, I think you're right, "destination site" isn't the right term. But it *is* the right term for sites like you described that are averse to outside links, because one could only access the articles by first going there. But I can't imagine why any news site wouldn't want to be linked to from search engines. News apps might be good examples of destination sites, such as those for WaPo, NYT, WSJ and BBC. You can't link into anything inside these apps, although it's worth mentioning that for a while WaPo spoofed this behavior by rigging up the Javascript at their website to respond to clicks by opening up articles in their app instead of in the browser. Browsing through Google News and then suddenly finding oneself in the WaPo app was very annoying and they must have received a lot of complaints about it because they removed the behavior sometime last year. --Percy
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: So why do you disagree with the idea that they are getting fewer eyeballs on ads ?
quote: The subject was eyeballs on ads and unless you can say that subscriptions produce enough extra impressions to counteract the loss from excluding non-subscribers - which you didn’t even try to discuss - I think that web traffic is much more on point than numbers of subscribers,
quote: That was support for the idea that web traffic and therefore eyeballs on ads had decreased as a result of going subscription-only.
quote: I don’t think that and I have been very clear that I oppose the legislation. Explaining the background does NOT mean supporting the supposed solution.
quote: As a source of income. Subscriptions don’t dictate how visitors arrive at a particular story but they do contribute to income (even if they’re free). Read it in context.
quote: The reality includes the context. However much you wish it didn’t.
quote: I said that they preferred subscriptions to people simply arriving through links. It’s pretty obvious that subscription-only sites don’t have non-subscribers simply arriving through links. Context. It’s important.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
PaulK writes: quote:So why do you disagree with the idea that they are getting fewer eyeballs on ads ? By "they" I assume you mean subscriber sites, and of course I believe that raising a paywall should reduce web traffic and result in fewer eyeballs on ads, at least initially. I won't try to predict what happens in the longer term as competing sites also move to subscription models creating paywall islands in an environment where people can only afford to subscribe to some, not all. But one possibility is that the more successful sites eventually get more eyeballs on ads.
quote: The subject was eyeballs on ads... I think you often find yourself believing, independent of how others might be experiencing the discussion, that the conversation is about "this, this, this and only this." Earlier when you insisted the subject was finances, finances, finances and only finances, it wasn't, and right now the subject isn't just "eyeballs on ads." Anyway, my point was that you may be reaching an unjustified conclusion that overall web traffic to news sites has declined. Maybe it has, but I don't know that it has, and you haven't offered any evidence that it has. The news media is still in the process of moving paid circulation from print to digital, and whether the net web traffic to their sites is currently increasing or decreasing is not something I know. But if on the other hand you only consider open news sites that then move to a subscription model, it of course seems only natural that their web traffic would decline, at least initially.
...and unless you can say that subscriptions produce enough extra impressions to counteract the loss from excluding non-subscribers - which you didn’t even try to discuss - I think that web traffic is much more on point than numbers of subscribers. Web traffic and total paid subscriptions both affect a site's income. Web traffic generates eyeballs on ads which generates income, and subscriptions generate income. Perhaps number-of-articles-read-per-day per subscription would be a helpful metric for news sites.
quote: I don’t think that and I have been very clear that I oppose the legislation. Explaining the background does NOT mean supporting the supposed solution. I'm sorry for seeming to ascribe a position to you that you don't hold, but the way you presented it lent the impression that you believe it's a valid point that Google and Facebook receive too large a proportion of total online ad revenue.
quote: As a source of income. Subscriptions don’t dictate how visitors arrive at a particular story but they do contribute to income (even if they’re free). Read it in context. I did read it in context, it's still wrong, and I still disagree. News sites love every single way that traffic is directed to their sites. Subscription sites don't care whether you arrive at an article via a link on their front page or a via a link at Google News. Non-subscribers can still see links to all current articles at the WaPo, NYT and WSJ paywall sites, and they can also see links to those articles at Google News. What happens when they click on a link is the same regardless of whether the link came from Google or from their own site. The precise behavior after clicking on a link does vary depending upon the site. NYT has a couple levels of teasers, first a free article, then free articles after registering, and finally a request to subscribe. WaPo allows no free articles, just politely invites you to subscribe. WSJ teases you with the first few paragraphs of the story followed by a "Subscribe" link.
quote: The reality includes the context. However much you wish it didn’t. If the focus and precision were present in the writing then the context you imagine was there would be clear to others.
quote: I said that they preferred subscriptions to people simply arriving through links. It’s pretty obvious that subscription-only sites don’t have non-subscribers simply arriving through links. Context. It’s important. But non-subscribers do arrive at paywall sites via links. Sooner or later, depending upon each site's subscription wooing process, they're asked to subscribe. What you said is wrong in any context. --Percy
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: And yet you mostly disagreed.
quote: Well when I experience you saying The effect of paywalls on traffic will vary widely across the various news outlets. I expect the immediately following text in the paragraph to elaborate on the effects of paywalls on traffic. Apparently you expect significant and unsignalled changes of subject mid-paragraph. At least when it is convenient to you to say that you did.
quote: It is relevant that advertising spend has shifted from the newspapers and to Facebook and Google. It is one of the reasons behind the law. That doesn’t mean that I support the law, especially after saying:
It’s surprising to find Facebook in the right, but it seems to be the case. quote: So you didn’t read it in context and what I said is still correct.
quote: I say that it is. Which is why you rely on quoting it out of context.Even though you can’t tell what rely on means without it. quote: And - at WaPo - get nothing but a page telling them to subscribe. And then they don’t bother clicking the links when they notice where they go. The NYT may be a bit more generous but the effect is similar. And doesn’t really do much for revenue,
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
PaulK writes: quote:And yet you mostly disagreed. But I didn't disagree with that at all. "I mostly disagree" was just the beginning of three paragraphs in Message 45 that described the details of what I was disagreeing with.
quote: Well when I experience you saying The effect of paywalls on traffic will vary widely across the various news outlets. I expect the immediately following text in the paragraph to elaborate on the effects of paywalls on traffic. Apparently you expect significant and unsignalled changes of subject mid-paragraph. At least when it is convenient to you to say that you did. I think it would work better if we focused on the topic. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations happen all the time in discussions, aren't unusual, and shouldn't become a major distraction. I don't think either of us is going to convince the other about it and we should let it go. I think we each were assuming the other would eventually see reason, but that's just not happening.
quote: It is relevant that advertising spending has shifted from the newspapers and to Facebook and Google. It is one of the reasons behind the law. That's irrelevant and not an actual reason. Any news outlet that uses AdSense gets 68% of the revenue, Google 32%. I think around 3/4 of Alphabet annual revenue is from AdSense. AdSense has competition, like Media.net and Amazon Ads. Plenty of news media sites, including Australian ones, probably use AdSense, or maybe the premium version called Ad Exchange or something like that. News media sites that don't think the 68/32 split is fair to them can go with another ad company or build their own ad system.
quote: So you didn’t read it in context and what I said is still correct. Why do you think it was correct to say that news sites don't want visitors to rely on outside links? News sites that are open of course like outside links. Paywall sites also like outside links because they bring subscribers to content and non-subscribers to whatever "persuade them to subscribe" model they're using. Even subscription sites that make no content available benefit from outside links because the more often people see those links, either at Google News or at a discussion board or from Twitter or wherever, the more they'll be persuaded to subscribe. It was being cut off from articles that persuaded me to subscribe to WaPo and NYT. WaPo used to allow a number of free articles per month. I think the limit was 10 free articles/month the first time I hit it, and I think the limit may have been higher at one time. During the 2016 election year I hit the limit several times and finally subscribed. The same happened at the NYT. The 2016 election and the Trump presidency caused my consumption of news to increase substantially. Since subscribing in 2016 both WaPo and NYT seem to have reduced the number of free articles. WaPo has reduced the number to zero, while NYT still allows some. I usually just click it off, but today I read The Guardian's plea to subscribe. It says I've read 66 articles in 12 months, which is 5.5 articles/month. A subscription is $19.99/month, so that's $3.63 per article. That's pretty expensive, particularly considering that I, probably like most people, don't read some number of the articles I click on, usually because the headline didn't give me a clear enough idea of what it was about and so I had to read the first couple paragraphs or so before discovering I wasn't interested. A WaPo subscription is $10/month. Let's say that I read 5 articles/day or 150/month (I'm sure it's more, but let's be conservative). That's 7¢/article. Compare that to The Guardian's $3.63/article. That's more than 50 times as expensive. I'd have to start reading a lot more Guardian articles before it would make sense to subscribe. Even if they raised a paywall and allowed no free articles, I'd have to hit their paywall a lot more often than 5 or 6 times per month before I'd be willing to subscribe. It's a similar comparison for the NYT. A subscription is $17/month, and if I read 5 articles/day then that's 11¢/article, still very reasonable. I also like the free mini-crossword. My wife likes the cooking articles and pays for the $40/year cooking section. --Percy
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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When I first heard that there was unreliable news on Facebook, my response was, "There's news on Facebook?"
My second response was, "Why would anybody get news from Facebook?""I've been to Moose Jaw, now I can die." -- John Wing
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Well there is a big problem there. When you quote material from my post and directly follow with I mostly disagree it means that you mostly disagree with the quoted text. The paragraphs that follow should explain why you disagree, not identify different things you disagree with.
quote: You are the one that has dragged it out by repeatedly insisting on a misrepresentation after it was corrected. Maybe you should ask yourself why you would do something so obviously counter-productive.
quote: I note that you offer nothing to dispute either of the points you contest. I think the fact that the newspapers lose nearly a third of the revenue from ads they host, on top of ad spending going on elsewhere is rather relevant,
quote: So much for dropping That’s not what I said. What I said was that the newspapers do not want to rely on people just turning up for revenue. So despite suggesting that the matter be dropped, you try to fan the flames by repeating the same misrepresentation again. OK that’s it. You’re just trolling now. So there really isn’t any point in trying to discuss this, is there? Not after such blatant bad faith.
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
A lot of news outlets have Facebook pages. Check out Update Your Browser | Facebook Facebook page. I'd include the page in this message but Facebook blocks it.
I don't know why news outlets think they need Facebook pages. It's seems like an unnecessary duplication of effort. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
I'm sorry you feel that way. Thanks for the discussion.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Recent headlines make clear how rapidly the Australian law will become unworkable:
As mentioned in Message 39, the billion dollar Google/Facebook deal with Australia represents $40 per capita. If Europe, Canada and the US work out similar deals it would cost Google/Facebook another $32 billion. The Australian deal is ludicrous, and as the news media in other countries work with their legislators to develop similar deals, Google and Facebook will have no option but to balk and refuse to pay more. Google is more motivated than Facebook to reach deals with news outlets because they're creating their own news service that will draw upon the content of traditional news outlets. Google doesn't want to pay for serving up links to news stories from Google News, indeed doesn't believe they *should* have to pay for it since the links to news outlets benefit the news outlets, not Google, but they are willing to pay for access to content. Not $40 per capita, of course, but probably something more in the neighborhood of $1 or $2 per capita on average for all deals worldwide. But Facebook isn't interested in creating its own news pages. New outlets already create their own Facebook pages, and while Facebook has capitulated in Australia, one has to believe that the current state of affairs represents a temporary holding action. It makes no sense for Facebook to pay for the privilege of hosting news outlets' Facebook pages. --Percy
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
?? How do news links get on facebook, google?
Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.
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