In a piece for The Guardian by my Columbia Journalism colleague, Emily Bell, is another bit of evidence about the state of newspaper websites: mostly ignored.
Bell approaches the subject from an important angle: advertising, ad blocking and how the mobile advertising market is “already effectively owned by Facebook”.
Readers of TheMarioBlog know that, since October, I have been writing occasionally about the end of the newspaper website, and the realistic fact that a majority of our news consumers get their news on a mobile device. Many also enter our “news brands” via a link from social media. It is a task to get these readers to read a second article.
Bell cites the importance of adblocking and how it is changing the publishing landscape:
“The mobile advertising market is already effectively owned by Facebook, so with the stick of adblocking and the carrot of instant articles publishers are finding themselves surrendering what were previously the most important parts of their businesses.”
Bell cites the specific case of adblocking in the UK;
“The biggest news for media owners in the UK last week was that a phone company, Three, is introducing adblocking across its network. Essentially this means that if you have a Three mobile phone, you will no longer see ads on the articles and pages you look at on your phone. Mobile advertising is still a very small revenue stream for most publishers, but in many cases it is the only one showing any growth. Phone companies such as Three see an opportunity to make more money and retain customers by purging annoying ads or making advertisers pay for the data consumption."
Bell adds that, while the main concern so far has been the speed at which newspapers will go out of print, right now publishers shift their attention to websites and other digital infrastructure.
“Having a legacy business configured around a website is now almost as much of a headache as the rumbling printing press, fueled by paper and money.”
Publishers who are deciding on future strategies, or who may still not be convinced that mobile is where the large segment of the audience is, need to read this piece and start formulating a plan.
