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There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

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Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#51

Post by stevenj »

I pay for the digital NYT for one specific section of it and if I could just pay for that part I would, but there's not an option to do that and the rate for the whole NYT subscription is cheap anyway.

I browse the rest of the NYT maybe a few times a week, but I largely just read the one section I like multiple times a day.

There's just a lot of competition amongst these big digital media organizations, most of which have many employees. And the article's author is right that they've been largely supported by VC money.

I think there is still room for good digital content that you can charge for (e.g. Stratechery), but creators will need to focus on a niche that customers find compelling enough to want to pay for (and I don't think finding one is that hard). (I'd also immediately pay for Matt Levine's Money Stuff column if he ever went independent.)

But most should be done with very small operations and staffs. The great thing about it is that digital content has such favorable marginal cost dynamics.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#52

Post by indubitable »

A couple of weeks back there was a headline about a site surreptitiously using visitor's hardware to mine some form of crypto. People were upset, but it made me wonder.. why isn't this a viable business model?

Crypto mining in lieu of advertisers would realign interest between content producer and content consumer - the person who reads your articles begins to be your customer again, instead of the companies advertising to the people reading your content. The only conflict of interest is wanting consumers to spend as much time as possible on your site, but I think that is a big step up compared to the plethora of conflicts imposed by relying on advertising as a business model.

This is of course ignoring the technicalities of working out a crypto where the economics work here. But assuming that would be possible (which is certainly a big assumption), this seems like an interesting concept that could solve the monetization issue facing so many things today in one fell swoop.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#53

Post by buttcoinslol »

soared wrote: post #32

Everyone not in the ad industry loves to make claims about how its going to fall apart, but no one I've seen has the expertise and data needed to back up their claims. Maybe the author has a point, but this article is incoherent. There is no sources and the entirety is predicated on baseless assumptions and some analogy. No sources or even attempt to prove any claims: - There are too many publishers - There is a fixe…

> There is a fixed amount of 'revenue seats' > Google/fb/etc take a portion of that fixed revenue

If you need citations for these, your burden of proof is a bit too extreme.

Unless advertisers have an infinite amount of money, there will be a finite amount of ad revenue. At some point, there's a floor to how much ad revenue you can capture while still having enough money to maintain a journalistic organization, creating a fixed number of 'revenue seats'.

A portion of that money will by default go to the largest players in the market, Google and Facebook.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#54

Post by buttcoinslol »

soared wrote: post #46
mooreds wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's something with a bit more detail about how the author has approached the revenue issue: http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/07/with-11000-subscribers-talk...

I'll add it to my reading list, thanks. Although this is the most overused fucking trope in digital media: > “The idea of publications totally based on advertising is, I think, an illusion. Some can do it, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be a sustainable model for most publications.” Like TV and radio never even existed.

TV and radio ads are sold by a limited amount of players at a local, regional, and national level. The ability to target smaller groups of consumers online that are more likely to be interested in the displayed ads is analogous to local/regional ads on some level.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#55

Post by jerrycruncher »

mrj wrote: post #47
barrkel wrote: post #27

The "pivot to video" would explain why every third article I click from outside my usual haunts has an auto-play video at the top that follows me as I scroll down the page. I've reached my limit; I've started blocking video CDNs with my adblocker. If there's a video I really want to watch, I'll use a different browser.

You can disable html5 auto play with Firefox. It's a godsend.

It absolutely is.

Setting media.autoplay.enabled to false in about:config will also keep audio and animated gifs from autoplaying. For me, it's the biggest quality of life improvment in web browsing since the advent of reader mode.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#57

Post by majani »

eli wrote: post #19

There are plenty of extremely profitable and growing ad-supported digital media businesses. It's just not the Vices and the Buzzfeeds of the world. Spending a ton of money up front to generate a huge volume of largely undifferentiated visitors and then selling their ad impressions at very low CPMs is not a winning strategy. And building it on top of the whims of Facebook's algorithm was worse.

Indeed. I feel like niche audiences with small operations is the only way to make profit in this business any more. Digital media is now a 'lifestyle business.'

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#58

Post by j-c-hewitt »

buttcoinslol wrote: post #53
soared wrote: post #32

Everyone not in the ad industry loves to make claims about how its going to fall apart, but no one I've seen has the expertise and data needed to back up their claims. Maybe the author has a point, but this article is incoherent. There is no sources and the entirety is predicated on baseless assumptions and some analogy. No sources or even attempt to prove any claims: - There are too many publishers - There is a fixe…

> There is a fixed amount of 'revenue seats' > Google/fb/etc take a portion of that fixed revenue If you need citations for these, your burden of proof is a bit too extreme. Unless advertisers have an infinite amount of money, there will be a finite amount of ad revenue. At some point, there's a floor to how much ad revenue you can capture while still having enough money to maintain a journalistic organization, creat…

The real question is how much advertisers need online display. Most don't need much. Honestly, online display has more meaningful competition from print (yes), radio, and TV because it's more geared to branding.

For direct response, generally speaking online ads are more cost effective. For the most part, you don't need to place direct response ads on publishers' websites. You can just put them on FB or Google search.

I would say that it's a simple issue of aesthetics and performance. Banner ads look like total garbage. Video ads on Youtube videos tend to be less appealing than video ads on a big screen TV. Tiny thumbnail video ads on news websites are visual pollution at best and a total annoyance at worst.

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#59

Post by SailingShip »

0xbear wrote: post #23
lsd5you wrote: post #4

There is a perception in right wing circles that this is also related to trumpism, after all this crash is happening with the stock market at an all time high. A lot of these publications are at the 'progressive' end of the spectrum and they may have misread the market, even for their core readers. Specifically the media (and in particular digital media's) response seems to have been one of all out activism against h…

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I made a conscious effort to not consume media sources which engage in blatant and one-sided activism. I just want the facts, and all the facts, not just the subset that fits a narrative. And I don’t need the commentary at all. In investigative journalism I want them to tear into both sides of the political spectrum equally, not suppress/ignore one side. I struggle to name a…

0xbear up-voted, I made a conscious effort to consume media sources which engage in blatant and one-sided anarchism, fact's are only relative to experience there is no narrative. no comment?! political spectrum?! Why would you even bring politics into computer classes?

Re: There’s a Digital Media Crash, But No One Will Say It

#60

Post by tryingagainbro »

soared wrote: post #32

Everyone not in the ad industry loves to make claims about how its going to fall apart, but no one I've seen has the expertise and data needed to back up their claims. Maybe the author has a point, but this article is incoherent. There is no sources and the entirety is predicated on baseless assumptions and some analogy. No sources or even attempt to prove any claims: - There are too many publishers - There is a fixe…

>>No sources or even attempt to prove any claims: - There are too many publishers

Maybe the market is deciding? Mashable sold for $50 Million which is no chump change but way less than last year.

>>- There is a fixed amount of 'revenue seats'

Isn't it? Does it grow every time one launches their own blog or Buzzfeed?

- Google/fb/etc take a portion of that fixed revenue

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+facebook+revenue+ad+dollars...

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