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“This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

wired.com

71–80 of 241 posts

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#71
How different is this (from an ad biz perspective) from Facebook Instant Articles? Is it that Apple gets no cut from publisher-sold ads, but Facebook Instant Articles only use Facebook ads? Do either of these services have some sort of exclusivity clause (ala Youtube, where if you publish one place you have to publish to Youtube too)?

EDIT: it looks like Facebook Instant Articles also takes 0% of publisher-served ads [1]. So it looks like this Apple News push is merely an attempt to match Facebook's product (and Wired screwed up messaging / accessibility here).

I'm still curious as to if anybody can add commentary / context from an advertising point of view.

IMO these events indicate a future where portals serve publisher content in a way that improves user experience (fewer ads, faster page load times) while the publishers catch up (rather than replace) their own native web experience. Publishers will want to own their distribution if it does them well. These plays (Apple, Facebook) may be less about poaching display dollars from Google than 1) cutting low-quality advertisers out of the network and 2) increasing hub engagement. I doubt the hubs monopolize the market but I'm definitely no expert

[1] https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-instantarti... LOL the FB site is running on wordpress ...

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#72
post #58

HTTP ERROR 418 Wrong Client The client you are using does not currently have access to this resource but may in the future as specified by the Expires header in the response. The user should either switch to a supported client as specified in the response body to access this resource or the current client should retry at the specified date. The current client MUST NOT retry the resource before the specified date.

HTTP 402 Payment Required

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora requires registration to simply read it. That's at least going to lose them viewers who don't want to bother.

Iirc you can get around this by appending ?share=1

The "Quora Share" add-on for Firefox will automatically add the "?share=1" parameter for you:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share/

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#74

This could backfire. Surely this should result in a Google penalty against Wired.com for publishing thin content? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719?hl=en If Wired wants the article to be exclusive on Apple News, fine, but in that case it should not be on the website. Keep it exclusively on Apple News. There is no content on this page beyond a headline.

Google should penalize sites that do that exactly the way they are penalizing sites with banners telling visitors to get their app. If you want your content on the web and have the benefits of it being on the web (searchable, linkable, etc) put it on the web. If you want it "exclusively on Apple News", put it there. But you shouldn't get to have your cake and eat it too.

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#75

Wired will be losing ad revenue due to Apple adding ad blocking abilities to mobile Safari. So, Wired moves content to Apple News which has ads that can't be blocked (and Apple conveniently takes a nice juicy cut of).

I think there's almost no chance that the percentage of iOS users blocking ads is enough to meaningfully impact Wired's overall revenue from that story. Even given that ad blocking apps have been top sellers, it's still only available on iOS 9, which has been out less than a week. So surely revenue from all web users (without an ad blocker) outweigh the (presumably) tiny amount of ad revenue Wired will earn from Apple News. And even if all that were false, why would Wired alone give in so readily to what's basically bullying? It's just not a credible theory.

Way more likely is that Apple is paying them a nice chunk of cash for the exclusivity to help market their News app. Same thing they did with HBO Now for the Apple TV, and with various albums for the iTunes Store and Apple Music.

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theory: Apple wants to defeat Google by eliminating ads and making the purchase of the device the amortized payment for content. Analysis: The problem with this strategy is that Apple is going to have to scale to all the content in the world, in foreign languages, on obscure or controversial topics on a million blogs. Super niche content will fade, starved of app revenue and have to rely on native IOS ad with unblock…

Well maybe not all ads, but it is clear that the carotid artery of Google is Ads (and web Ads to be specific) so carving off channels and feeding them into Apple at the source device is a way of "competing" without having to have better Ad reach. I continue to think the end of this is going to be some sort of 'content tax' (everythings a paywall) and people will complain about how they don't get any free content any…

The problem with this strategy is it's main assumption: that people want the content so much to switch the device / pay for it.

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quora permanently lost me several years ago when they suddenly forced me to select five categories of interest before I could continue to the question I was interested in. Forcing me to do something I have no interest in and will never make use of is a good way to alienate me.

Quora requires registration to simply read it. That's at least going to lose them viewers who don't want to bother.

Pinterest is probably the worst offender for that. You get progressively blocked the more you try to read.

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#79
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certain that Apple's long game is to make this the norm. If there's one surefire way to get people addicted to ad blockers, it's to make them available on mobile devices. Once enough content creators start moving content behind News-walls, then Apple can roll out desktop versions of News. And as people then start asking each other "how do I get ad blocking in my browser as well," Apple's well positioned t…

I don't think you're taking into account that websites are free to create their own apps, and advertise there. There's little incentive for a content creator to have their content off the net, and into someone else's apps. Im not understanding Wired's motivation here, but I'm not too concerned because Wired isn't the most intelligent publication in the first place.

"websites are free to create their own apps"

The users may accept to install a few apps (Apple/Google/… News), but not one for each website.

Re: “This story is being previewed exclusively on Apple News until Tuesday”

#80

This could backfire. Surely this should result in a Google penalty against Wired.com for publishing thin content? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719?hl=en If Wired wants the article to be exclusive on Apple News, fine, but in that case it should not be on the website. Keep it exclusively on Apple News. There is no content on this page beyond a headline.

Google should penalize sites that do that exactly the way they are penalizing sites with banners telling visitors to get their app. If you want your content on the web and have the benefits of it being on the web (searchable, linkable, etc) put it on the web. If you want it "exclusively on Apple News", put it there. But you shouldn't get to have your cake and eat it too.

Penalize the site or the story? Should Google keep it out of search until it shows up on the "greater" web or are you advocating punishing the whole site because they have some content exclusively walled for a certain amount of time?
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