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L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

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Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#541

Post by dredmorbius »

dx034 wrote: post #337
dredmorbius wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is. Much of Africa will have little choice but to muddle through. We'll likely get a good idea of what the "no or low response" route looks like.

You're right, but I'd classify Sweden as medium response. They still have measures in place, just not as harsh. With poorer countries (which applies to most of Africa), I guess it'll take several months or years until we know what the excess death rate was. Esp. in rural communities, that data probably often won't be reported as a Covid death. Even Northern Italy had an excess death rate 2x as high as the reported de…

Sweden's decidedly more casual than other OECD / Eurozone countries. NPR were carrying a segment on it this morning.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833623311/in-sweden-a-differe...

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#542

Post by erik_seaberg »

viewer5 wrote: post #349
erik_seaberg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably the right thing because it was conceivable to end up with 30 million pneumonia victims and no way to treat them all. But we shouldn't forget we had to waste 0.1% of all 328 million lives (one month/78.54 years under house arrest) and counting.

not going to work != wasting life

Like many of us, I'm working from home. It's the rest of life that we're locked in from.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#543

Post by babesh »

rightbyte wrote: post #208
tootie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised. I'd think online news would be one of the industries benefitting from this crisis. Is the revenue tied to lack of conversions on online ads?

I guess the "adworth" of a single consumer is sort off fixed and when the consumer browses the internet twice the amount of time the revenue per impression falls. Also I guess the "adworth per capita" has gone down alot when people are reluctant consume extravagenza.

Each advertiser is trying to optimize ROI for the search ads it spends on. They do that by tracing clicks to subsequent purchases. This tells them how profitable/unprofitable the ad purchase was.

The advertising system is self balancing on cost per click if each advertiser optimizes it’s spend based on portfolio theory and because of the reverse Dutch auction that Google runs.

With the virus, some advertisers just don’t have anything they can sell right now (cruises, concerts, sporting events). They won’t even be bidding. Others will have things to sell that are in far less demand (cars, restaurants). The decreased demand will drive down cost per click (or adworth as you call it).

I have noticed many companies dive into emails to previous customers. They are also offering deals. This is cheaper than ads.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#544

Post by nate_meurer »

eropple wrote: post #400
nate_meurer wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it's not exactly gaslighting. Rather, it's a fucking strawman made in bad faith. The stakes are not "my stocks". The stakes are civil society, which as you may or may not know, can't exist for long without a functioning economy.

You're right, the stakes are civil society. Which you no longer get to claim you have when you sacrifice the weak and the sick to Moloch for pseudofictional accounts in a computer somewhere. We must take care of each other, it is our basic obligation as citizens of a civil society , and this is the only way we can do that right now.

If that's what you mean then fucking say it. Tarring folks who express concern over the economy with a bullshit strawman just makes you the asshole.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#545

Post by xnyan »

pgrote wrote: post #472
ceilingcorner wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending $100 a month on a grabbag of various newspapers is completely infeasible for the average person. Ergo, it's not a solution to the problem.

I understand what you are saying and am grateful I can afford the monthly cost. The cost I pay is worth the value I receive.

I agree and I also subscribe to what I can.

The only problem for us is, like others are saying, I don’t think our subscriptions are enough money and I don’t think it’s feasible financially for enough people to do so at the level needed to keep enough quality newspapers and journalists in business.

(in the us) The New York Times is arguably the only non-business paper that makes enough money from subscriptions to make sense sticking it out alone. Maybe the Washington Post, LA Times and a few others (and maybe not, i hear the subscription rates are horrible) too, but for the vast majority bundling digital subscription as a single package is the only way I see for small papers to attract significant numbers of subscribers.

It would be really great to read papers from Las Vegas and Cincinnati, but I can’t see myself ever setting up and managing individual subscriptions to them if I am being honest.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#546

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

DuskStar wrote: post #144
therealdrag0 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for example there's lots of non-essential business that can operate while enforcing social distancing. Closing bars and restaurants makes sense. But closing stores were you walk in and walk out does not make sense. Banning fishing doesn't make sense. Very broad strokes have been used to lock stuff down.

And at least in Michigan, they're not taking the time to open up low risk businesses now - instead they're filling in even more of the gaps that allowed life to continue. No golf courses, even without any staff contact. No landscaping. No landscaping supplies . No motorboats or jet skis. No travel between two residences you own. But at least you can still buy lottery tickets!

Seriously, how is allowing kayaking/sailing but banning motor boats, even when alone, anything but taking advantage of the crisis to push through an environmental agenda?

People wonder why others are afraid to give the government more power, this is one of the best examples of why.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#547

Post by realdlee »

pgrote wrote: post #370
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #361

Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet? I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying for a subscription. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the day for getting a return on my investment. New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA T…

>I don't want to subscribe to just one paper. There are so many good articles in all the papers. A few years back I just went ahead and subscribed to the ones I wanted to support to try to support journalism. It was more affordable than I thought, but there is friction to keep them from taking advantage of you. For instance, at one point it was cheaper for me to subscribe to the Sunday edition of the NY Times to get…

Which is your favorite paper?

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#548

Post by mehrdadn »

easytiger wrote: post #522
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there would have to be some wrongdoing to be proven Are you claiming the extensive evidence brought in numerous cases across the country against Purdue and the Sackler family, accepted in many cases by juries and judges, has not done that?

I was asking what it was. I'm in the UK and am not familiar with this issue despite the same medication being available here

If you're genuinely interested, there's so much reading on this. I'll quote one snippet here for you. Just to give you an idea. (This is not an invitation to reply to it and debate the issue. Just trying provide a pointer for reading more on the topic since you expressed interest.)

> The drugmaker admitted in 2007, when confronted with evidence gathered by prosecutors, that it trained sales representative to tell doctors that OxyContin was less addictive and prone to abuse than competing opioids, claims beyond the one approved by the F.D.A.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#549

Post by csallen »

claudiawerner wrote: post #510
selectodude wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give peo…

Jobs was right to say it's not part of some grand conspiracy, but if you look more closely, you see that people ("consumers") and media are both produced by the same ideological and economic forces that serve each other. It's not some sinister plot, it's just how culture has developed to this point. The media does give people what they want, but where do people get ideas of what they want? It's a dialectic, not a one…

If it's a two-way conversation, I think it's fairly lopsided. The reason is: competition. When consumers only have one choice or a few, sure, that company can exercise a lot of power in dictating what people read, and thereby influence what they want (by limiting what's possible for them to experience and be aware of).

However, there are countless competing sources of entertainment and news online. If any particular organization gets away from giving consumers what they want, and instead becomes overly wrapped up in trying to tell consumers what they should want, they'll get eaten by the competition.

The result is a web in which billions of people flock to whatever "channel" has the message that resonates best. Meanwhile the people running these organizations are doing their best to figure out what will resonate, so they can survive and thrive. If a story gets clicks and shares, repeat. If it doesn't, stop writing things like that. Survival of the fittest.

There are some mitigating factors ofc. For example, a lot of smaller media orgs will simply copy what the bigger ones are doing, which gives the bigger ones a lot of influence. Also, there's momentum. Once you have a loyal audience, there's friction for them to switch to reading a different source, so you get more leeway.

But all things told, I think reader demand drives most of the content we see.

Re: L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’

#550

Post by dataduck »

CydeWeys wrote: post #483
dataduck wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. How many deaths within your family and circle of friends are you willing to accept from political instability resulting from lockdowns?

Zero. And so far there have been zero, but I know of people who've actually died from COVID-19. We are very, very far from political instability still. Let's not be alarmist.

Of course. It's not like a global recession in the midst of widespread political polarization has ever caused problems before.
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