By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

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A smackdown over programmatic ads and why reader revenue is crucial

We are having a smackdown over an unlikely topic — programmatic ads, those low-quality ads fed to websites by a third party, nearly always Google.

At one time they were fairly lucrative and supported news organizations like The Huffington Post. But their value diminished over time. Indeed, it seemed anachronistic when The Messenger launched last year with a pretty substantial newsroom, offering free access in the hopes that it would attract a mass audience and thrive on programmatic. Its quick demise was as predictable as it was depressing.

Anyway, last week Josh Marshall, the founder and editor of the political news site Talking Points Memo, wrote a post explaining what had happened to programmatic ads over the years. He included a chart (above) showing that revenue from such ads had collapsed at TPM, from nearly $1.7 million in 2016 to just $75,000 in 2023. “As I think is pretty clear, if this is your business, you’re dead,” he wrote. “You don’t have a business.” He added that TPM had successfully pivoted to reader revenue, which was how his project had survived the programmatic meltdown.

Enter Ben Smith, the co-founder of Semafor. Smith called Marshall’s numbers “a dramatic oversimplification,” arguing that the reason TPM’s programmatic ad revenues had fallen so much was that Marshall had put much of his content behind a paywall — and even charged a higher rate for an ad-free experience, meaning that of course ad revenues were going to drop significantly. “The drop in ad revenue is a feature, not a bug, of that strategy,” Smith wrote. “Meanwhile programmatic ad rates, for instance, have actually increased — modestly — over the period that Marshall’s chart covers.”

Smith also quoted Foster Kamer, the editor-in-chief of Futurism, as calling Marshall’s post “sensationalist bs.”

Well, now! I’ve been waiting to write until Marshall responded, and on Tuesday he did. Essentially his counter-argument is that his programmatic revenues didn’t drop because of TPM’s paywall; rather, he implemented a paywall because programming revenues were dropping. He writes:

[W]e didn’t just decide this was money we didn’t need anymore. The changes we made that played a direct role in the decline were entirely in reaction to reductions in potential revenue which we knew we couldn’t sustain. While we were making those changes we still fought for every dollar we could get out of the rapidly diminishing programmatic advertising pie. The results are what you see in that chart, which not surprisingly got a lot of people’s attention.

Now, there’s no way of knowing exactly how much programmatic revenue TPM would be earning if Marshall had left the site wide open and had tried to get as much money as possible from such ads. But he guesstimated that it might be about a third of what TPM was getting in 2016 — in other words, maybe around $570,000, a significant decline from $1.7 million. “Needless to say,” Marshall adds, “no company can withstand a 2/3rds drop in a primary revenue stream.”

Noting that Kamer and Futurism really are making a go of it with programmatic, Marshall points out that certain categories such as tech and science are still able to generate decent revenues from Google ads. “There are no industry sectors for cultural polarization and societal decay, where we operate,” Marshall writes. “They also don’t face the negative premium that news publishers — in the sense of news about daily events and politics — face in a polarized age.”

My own take on all this is that Marshall’s initial post was only a little bit deceptive, and only for readers who weren’t paying attention. He laid out his paywall strategy quite clearly. It’s obvious that if your response to the cratering of programmatic is to start charging for your journalism, then your programmatic revenue is going to drop even more quickly than it otherwise would.

This is relevant, too, to local news. There’s a reason that some 2,900 newspapers have closed since 2005, and that reason is the ad revenues publishers were hoping for to support what were initially free websites never materialized. For-profit local news has become extraordinarily difficult. A few large regional newspapers, like The Boston Globe and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, have achieved profitability through digital subscriptions, but that strategy has proven to be a pretty much a non-starter at smaller outlets. That’s why we’re seeing a major shift to nonprofit for local news.

As Marshall puts it, “who are we trying to kid here? Does anyone think that advertising — direct or programmatic — still sustains digital news organizations, especially independent ones? Really? I think the almost weekly lists of bankrupt and shuttered news outlets tells the story pretty clearly.”

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The end of programmatic ads

This is mind-boggling. Josh Marshall writes that his political news and commentary site, Talking Points Memo, took in nearly $1.7 million in programmatic ad revenues in 2016 — and was down to just $75,000 in 2023. Marshall says that TPM is doing OK because he made the move to paid memberships a few years before the ad-pocalypse really set in. But it shows that the symbiotic relationship between news and the tech platforms has now completely disintegrated.

Marshall’s numbers show why for-profit news outlets can’t survive without fairly strict paywalls. They also show why nonprofit is so much more robust than for-profit — it’s easier to get money from foundations, wealthy individuals, paying members and earned income such as sponsorships and events. That’s not to say local publishers can’t succeed at selling ads to businesses in their community. But it does show that relying on third-party ads served up by Google is over.

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Illinois seeks to bolster community journalism. Plus, a local news round-up.

The Illinois Statehouse. Photo (cc) 2023 by Warren LeMay.

Illinois lawmakers this week unveiled a massive package aimed at bolstering local news. According to Mark Caro of the Local News Initiative, based at Northwestern University in Chicago, the package comprises two separate bills:

The Journalism Preservation Act would require Big Tech companies such as Google and Facebook to compensate news organizations for the content that they share, display or link to on their platforms. The Strengthening Community Media Act offers a broad array of incentives, tax breaks and scholarships intended to repopulate local newsrooms. Included in that bill is a provision that calls for 120 days’ written notice before a local news organization may be sold to an out-of-state company.

As I’ve said before, I’m less than enthusiastic about going after the tech platforms, which presupposes that they are somehow stealing journalistic content without paying for it. Facebook executives have made it clear that they can live quite nicely without news. With respect to Google, media outlets find themselves in the awkward situation of demanding compensation while at the same time depending on the search giant to drive traffic to their websites. Indeed, any one of them could insert a simple line of code in their sites that would make them invisible to Google. None of them does. I would like to see Google and Facebook do more for local news, and maybe it ought to be mandated. But this bill seems like too much of a blunt instrument, as does similar legislation being pushed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar at the federal level.

The second Illinois bill includes a number of different ideas. I particularly like the proposed requirement for a 120-day notification period. As Steven Waldman, the president of Rebuild Local News, said recently on the podcast “E&P Reports,” a mandatory delay can give communities time to rally and prevent their local newspaper from falling into the hands of chain ownership.

Other provisions of the Strengthening Community Media Act would mandate that state agencies advertise with local news outlets, provide tax credits to publishers for hiring and retaining journalists, enact additional tax credits for small businesses that advertise with local outlets, and create scholarships for students who agree to work at a local Illinois news organization for two years or more.

It’s good to see action taking place at the state level given that several federal proposals in recent years have gone nowhere despite bipartisan support. It’s also notable that the proposals were drafted by Illinois’ Local Journalism Task Force, which was created in August 2021. Here in Massachusetts, legislation was signed by then-Gov. Charlie Baker way back in January 2021 to create a commission that would study local news. I had a hand in drafting that legislation and would be one of its members, but the commission has yet to get off the ground.

There are several other developments in local news that are worth taking note of.

• Gannett is making a $2 million investment in its Indianapolis Star aimed at bolstering the newsroom and the advertising sales staff. Two top Gannett executives recently appeared on “E&P Reports” about Gannett’s plans to reinvest in its properties. Unfortunately, Holly V. Hayes of the Indy Star writes, “This is the only site in the USA TODAY Network, which includes more than 200 local publications across the country, where such an investment is being made.” My hope is that if the investment leads to a boost in circulation and revenues, then it will serve as a model for what Gannett might do elsewhere.

• A new hyperlocal news project has made its debut in Boston. The Seaport Journal, a digital news outlet, covers the city’s newest neighborhood. Meanwhile, the Marblehead Beacon, one of three independent projects covering that town, has announced that it’s ending regular coverage but will continue to “pursue periodic and unique pieces, and shift away from daily, weekly, or otherwise regular articles.” A reminder: We track independent local news organizations in Massachusetts, and you can find a link to our list in the upper right corner of this website. Just look for “Mass. Indy News.”

• Local access cable television plays an important role in community journalism by carrying public meetings, providing a platform for residents to make their own media, and, in some cases, by covering the news directly. Unfortunately, cord-cutting has placed access television at risk since stations’ income is based on a fee assessed to cable providers for each subscriber. In CommonWealth Beacon, Caleb Tobin, a production technician at Holbrook Community Access and media and a junior at Stonehill College, argues in favor of Massachusetts legislation that would impose a 5% fee on streaming services. “While often viewed as a relic of the past,” Tobin writes, “the services that cable access stations provide are more important now than they’ve ever been.”

• Many thanks to Tara Henley, host of the Canadian podcast “Lean Out,” who interviewed Ellen Clegg and me about our book, “What Works in Community News.” You can listen here.

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Why Google’s AI search tool could harm news publishers

Photo (cc) 2010 by Robert Scoble

The question of whether Google should pay for news is about to get a lot more complicated. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that news publishers are freaking out over a new search tool powered by artificial intelligence that Google is working on.

The problem is that current Google search protocols drive a lot of traffic to news websites, and that could change. AI-powered search may very well keep users inside Google, thus denying clicks to the originators of the journalism that users are looking for. As an example, here is what The Atlantic believes it’s up against, according to the Journal’s Keach Hagey, Miles Kruppa and Alexandra Bruell:

About 40% of the magazine’s web traffic comes from Google searches, which turn up links that users click on. A task force at the Atlantic modeled what could happen if Google integrated AI into search. It found that 75% of the time, the AI-powered search would likely provide a full answer to a user’s query and the Atlantic’s site would miss out on traffic it otherwise would have gotten.

That 40% figure is typical for news publications. And though Google executives say that they intend to roll out AI search in such a way that journalism will continue to benefit, the Journal story makes it clear that’s nothing more than a vague promise at the moment.

The AI threat comes at a time when much of the media business is pushing for passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), which would require that Google and Facebook come to the bargaining table and reach a deal to compensate news organizations for repurposing their content. It’s a dicey proposition — Facebook has been moving away from news, and as the Journal story shows, publishers are dependent on traffic from Google even as they insist that Google ought to pay them.

Just this week, Brier Dudley of The Seattle Times wrote that the NewsGuild-CWA, the union that represents 26,000 employees at a number of news outlets, now supports the JCPA as the result of a possible tweak to the legislation that would be more explicit about protecting jobs. Brier also touted a recent study that claims the two tech giants should be paying news organizations some $12 billion a year.

Despite some bipartisan support for the JCPA, finding agreement within our dysfunctional Congress may prove impossible. And the rise of AI-based search isn’t going to make passage any easier.

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A new study argues that Google and Facebook should be paying billions for news

Photo (cc) 2013 by Robbie Shade

A new study argues that Google and Facebook should be paying U.S. news publishers between $11.9 billion and $13.9 billion a year for the use of their journalism. Of that total, Facebook owes $1.9 billion and Google between $10 billion and $12 billion. That’s a lot of money. By way of comparison, the recently announced Press Forward philanthropic initiative seeks to raise $500 million to support nonprofit local news over the next five years.

An overview of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Houston, Columbia University and the Brattle Group, an international consulting firm, was published Monday in The Conversation. “Digital platforms benefit from having varied, credible and timely news content provided by publishers,” write two of the four reseachers, Anya Schiffrin and Haaris Mateen. “This enhances user engagement and makes their platform more attractive to advertisers. News publishers benefit by finding an avenue through which they can distribute their content, thereby reaching more readers.”

The study itself, which is based on “game theoretical insights into cooperative bargaining in cases where value is jointly created,” argues that the platforms and news publishers should split the revenue generated by that mutually beneficial relationship on a 50-50 basis rather than allowing the platforms to keep virtually all of it, as is now the case. “We document that Google and Facebook are making payments to publishers around the world that are vastly below our estimates of a ‘fair payment,’” they write.

The study looks at an Australian law passed several years ago that mandated such revenue sharing. The authors also note that the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, whose principal sponsor is U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., would establish similar payments by forcing the giant platforms to negotiate with publishers for a share of their revenue.

Ben Smith, writing in Semafor, observes that attempts to extract money from the platforms came about because efforts to support news with digital advertising hit a dead end. “The drive to force digital platforms to pay news publishers came after a decade in which publishers chased online ad revenue generated by traffic from social and search platforms — only to find that clicks simply couldn’t underwrite the cost of quality journalism,” according to Smith, who adds: “The new study will be a cudgel for regulators looking to squeeze Meta and (especially) Google.”

The question is whether anything is likely to happen and, more important, if the push for platform revenues is coming too late. The platforms don’t look quite as powerful today as they did a few years ago. Google is currently on trial in a massive antitrust case over its ubiquitous search engine. Moreover, after Canada passed a revenue-sharing law, Facebook simply withdrew all news content, and Google has threatened to do the same.

I’ve long argued that lawsuits filed by news publishers over Google’s ad tech are a more promising route to getting some money out of the platforms. About 200 newspapers are suing Google, claiming that the platform’s control of all aspects of the digital advertising market has driven ad prices through the floor to Google’s benefit. The publishers are also suing Facebook, claiming that Google and Facebook colluded illegally. Separately, Gannett is suing Google, but not Facebook.

The new study takes an interesting look at the extent of the damage that Google and Facebook have caused the news business, but I don’t see how that translates into actual revenues for news — especially with Facebook and Google signaling that they’re willing to walk away from news altogether rather than pay.

The ad-tech cases, on the other hand, are grounded in well-established law banning monopolistic practices that cause harm. Google and Facebook have made it impossible for anyone to extract more than a pittance from digital advertising. That’s fine with the platforms because of their massive scale — but it doesn’t work for news outlets, especially small, local enterprises, because they need more than pennies to pay for quality journalism in their communities.

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Google in the dock

The New York Times today reports on the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google. The federal trial is scheduled to get under way next Tuesday.

The lawsuit, according to the Times’ David McCabe and Cecilia Kang, revolves around accusations that Google monopolizes search by paying off the likes of Apple and Mozilla to make Google their default search engine. But I think a group of newspaper publishers are pursuing a more interesting antitrust case against Google (and Facebook), charging that Google’s control of every aspect of online advertising technology has allowed the giant platform to drive down ad prices and leave media organizations on the sidelines.

Facebook is part of the suit because the publishers claim that Google and Facebook have colluded in order to keep Facebook from setting up its own competing ad system. Separately, Gannett has sued Google, but not Facebook, over the same issues.

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Ads on Media Nation

Over the weekend I turned on Google ads, and they were so overwhelming that I’ve turned them off. If you’re seeing them now, no worries — they’re supposed to disappear in an hour or so. They may be back, but only if I can figure out how to tone them down.

Sue Cross of INN tells us why this is a golden age of news innovation

Sue Cross at the recent INN Days gathering in Washington. Photo by Will Allen-DuPraw and used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Sue Cross, the veteran journalist who will step down as executive director and CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) by the end of 2023. Sue has led INN since 2015, and has overseen a period of tremendous growth. There were 117 nonprofit newsroom members listed in the INN’s 2015 annual report. This year, INN has 425 member newsrooms.

She has also been a driving force in the NewsMatch program, a collaborative fundraising project that has helped raise more than $270 million for emerging newsrooms since its launch in 2016. Before joining INN, Cross was a journalist and executive at The Associated Press. Cross says we are in a golden age of news innovation, and she hopes to continue to lend her support. She also says she hopes to spend time on personal projects.

Ellen has a Quick Take on the launch of the Houston Landing, a nonprofit digital site serving Greater Houston. I provide an update on efforts to extract money out of Google and Facebook in order to pay for news.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

In a separate lawsuit, Gannett joins antitrust effort aimed at Google (and Facebook)

Photo (cc) 2010 by John Marino

Since early 2021, Google has faced legal challenges over its control of digital advertising. Essentially, the tech giant stands accused of violating antitrust law by controlling all aspects of the ad market. As Paul Farrell, the lawyer for a group of seven newspapers in West Virginia, told Gretchen A. Peck of the trade publication Editor & Publisher:

They [Google] have completely monetized and commercialized their search engine, and what they’ve also done is create an advertising marketplace in which they represent and profit from the buyers and the sellers, while also owning the exchange. Google is the broker for the buyer and gets a commission. Google is the broker for the seller and gets a commission. Google owns, operates and sets the rules for the ad exchange. And they are also in the market themselves.

The suit filed by Farrell on behalf of the West Virginia papers was later joined by about 200 papers and included Facebook, which was accused of colluding with Google in order to receive preferential treatment. Attorneys general in Texas and several other states filed a separate suit, with BuzzFeed News reporting that the CEOs of Google and Facebook “personally signed off on a secret advertising deal.” The Justice Department got involved, and the European Union is suing Google on similar grounds.

On Tuesday, Google’s legal woes grew that much more complicated as Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, filed its own lawsuit against Google in federal district court. Writing in USA Today, Gannett’s flagship publication, chair and CEO Mike Reed accused Google of “monopolization of advertising technology markets and deceptive commercial practices.” He added:

The core of the case and our position is that Google abuses its control over the ad server monopoly to make it increasingly difficult for rival exchanges to run competitive auctions. Further, Google’s exchange rigs its own auctions so Google’s advertisers can buy ad space at bargain prices. That means less investment in online content and fewer ad slots for publishers to sell and advertisers to buy. Google always wins because it takes a growing share of that shrinking pie.

In addition to USA Today, Gannett owns about 200 daily papers and other publications across the country, including local papers such as the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham and The Providence Journal.

So why did Reed decide to file his own lawsuit rather than joining antitrust efforts that are already under way? It’s a good question, and it’s one that Editor & Publisher’s Mike and Robin Blinder asked him about in their vodcast, “E&P Reports.” Reed’s answer: “You know, as far as us going by ourselves, we just felt like we had the right size, we had the right legal counsel, and we felt like we didn’t want to wait.”

Jeff Jarvis, a well-known digital media observer and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, was critical of the Gannett suit, telling E&P:

It is tragic that once-great Gannett is resorting to protectionism and retribution against its competitors rather than have a strategy for innovation and growth in a changed marketplace. There are legitimate questions to be addressed regarding Google’s power in both sides of the advertising market and authorities in both Europe and the U.S. are investigating them. But for Gannett to blame Google’s alleged monopoly for its present troubles is just sad.

But you can disparage Gannett for decimating its newspapers while still supporting legal efforts to hold Google to account. Few media observers have been more critical of Gannett than my What Works partner Ellen Clegg and I. Greed and crushing debt have led the chain to cut its journalistic capacity far more deeply than would have otherwise been necessary. Yet it’s simply a fact that very little digital advertising money has flowed to the news business, and that lack of innovation on the part of the news business is only partly to blame. If news publishers and government investigators are able to show that situation is either partly or wholly the result of illegal practices on the part of Google (and Facebook), then there’s no reason why Gannett shouldn’t be one of the beneficiaries, regardless of the company’s otherwise loathsome behavior.

Moreover, the antitrust route strikes me as far more promising than congressional efforts to force Google and Facebook to pay for the news they repurpose. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act on a bipartisan 14-7 vote, according to Ted Johnson of Deadline. The JCPA would allow the news business to bargain collectively with Google and Facebook for a share of their revenues. Even if the JCPA passes the full Senate, though, it seems unlikely to prevail in the Republican-controlled House. A similar law in Australia has served mainly to enrich press baron Rupert Murdoch, and there’s no guarantee that the JCPA would bolster journalism at the local level.

Regulating a monopoly often leads to unintended negative consequences. Breaking one up, as Gannett and its numerous co-plaintiffs would like to do, can spark innovation. Local news today is getting by through a combination of paywalls, low-value programmatic ads and — in the nonprofit sector — foundation grants, membership fees and events. Nothing would be more welcome than to see that bolstered by a reinvigorated ad market.

The Bard of Google writes a bio of me. Hilarity ensues.

My friend Bill Mitchell sent along a bio of me that he asked Google’s Bard to write — proving, once again, that artificial intelligence may be artificial, but it sure isn’t intelligent. Throughout this short bio, Bard mixes me up with marketing guy Dan Kennedy. Here’s the whole thing, with the mistakes highlighted in blue.

Dan Kennedy is a media critic, marketing consultant, and author. He is a former media critic for the Boston Phoenix and is now a professor of journalism at Northeastern University. He is also the founder of Magnetic Marketing and the author of several books on marketing and business, including “The No B.S. Marketing Letter” and “The Magnetic Marketing System.”

Kennedy is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on CNN, CNBC, and Fox News. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes and The Huffington Post. [Note: Years ago I appeared a couple of times on CNN and once on Fox News. I don’t believe I ever wrote anything for Forbes, but I could be mistaken.]

Kennedy is a controversial figure in the media industry. He has been criticized for his outspoken views on the state of journalism and his willingness to criticize his colleagues. However, he is also respected for his knowledge of the industry and his ability to help businesses grow.

Kennedy is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Boston University School of Public Communication. [A bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northeastern University and a master’s in American history from BU, but not from SPC.] He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. [Not since 1980.]

Here are some of his notable works:

* The No B.S. Marketing Letter (2009)
* The Magnetic Marketing System (2012)
* The Renegade Challenge (2016)
* The No B.S. Inner Circle (2017) [LOL.]

Way back when, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam wrote about me, the other DK and yet another DK. At least he was trying to be funny. And I should add that I’ll be smiling all week about being called “a controversial figure in the media industry.”

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