
The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising - trey_swann
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/the-economists-tom-standage-on-digital-strategy-and-the-limits-of-a-model-based-on-advertising
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bjelkeman-again
The interesting thing with the Economist is that they alone seem to be able to
do what they do. A weekly editorial summary of news and relevant stories that
people pay for, which is read by business people. Is there a competing
magazine? I am not aware of it.

Their content is unrivalled, although you really need to be aware of their
biases. But I don't feel they try to hide them, rather the opposite.

However, with so few global sources of information, like The Economist, that
do a good job, aren't we in danger of quite a narrow understanding of what is
going on?

I think the Guardian Weekly is an interesting counterpoint, but it isn't
avaiable on digital afaik. Are ther other weekly news magazines that reaches
the Economists editorial quality?

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timclark
Der Spiegel is a high quality weekly news magazine that I think compares
favourably to The Economist if you read German.

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netrus
I guess it's time to take a look at Der Spiegel again, but if I remember
correctly, their focus is much more centered on Germany, Europe and the West,
while the Economist has news from the whole world. And it's articles are short
enough to read the whole magazine every week.

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mike_hearn
The other thing about Der Spiegel is they seem to enjoy provocative/trolling
articles more frequently than TE (though TE goes in for this as well from time
to time). For instance Der Spiegel seems to pretty frequently write long but
vague pieces about how Silicon Valley is taking over the world, will our new
techno-overlords be benevolent, etc. Whereas TE tends to treat the tech
industry more as an interesting specimen of butterfly to be dispassionately
studied.

How much that reflects Germanic vs Anglo views of the world, I don't know. But
having read articles in Der Spiegel very occasionally, it gave me a pretty
different vibe.

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fallous
I've been cogitating on some of the themes Standage brings up in this
interview for awhile and I suspect he's far more correct than incorrect. The
proliferation of adblocking and incognito browsing is going to do marked
damage to advertising networks like DoubleClick because the loss of
demographic targeting means they are forced to basically become run-of-site ad
outlets. Additionally, the amount of fraud in the ad views and click rates has
become far more obvious to advertisers over the last 18 months and will only
increase as sites try and game the revenue to make up for ad blocking. This
does not bode well for the traditional ad model that has prevailed on the Net
for the last 15+ years.

I suspect that Facebook becomes the real winner in this due to the fact that
no one uses the site without logging in, has provided enormous amounts of
targeting info, and with Facebook controlling the ad experience they cut out
the likes of Doubleclick and deal directly with the advertisers. They're
vouching for the legitimacy of the ad performance metrics and handling the
targeting internally using their own data, and so will be able to command a
huge premium. A few years ago I would've laughed at the idea that Facebook
would be able to compete with Google in the ad revenue market, but I'm not
laughing now.

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enraged_camel
Don't adblockers affect Facebook as well?

As a Facebook user, companies are spending money to show me targeted ads, but
I never see them. No doubt this decreases their ROI.

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dragonwriter
> Don't adblockers affect Facebook as well?

Perhaps, but a major part of Facebook's business model is organic
advertisement (pay-for-reach posts) which won't be affected by ad blockers.
AFAICT as a user, that's an increasingly important part of Facebook.

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drpgq
"The other thing about ads is that 41 percent of millennials are using ad
block. My daughter has ad block and she goes around infecting every machine
she gets to. She puts it on everything."

Didn't realize that ad block was that popular with millennials. I was always
thought it was more popular with those that were tech savvy regardless of age.

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3pt14159
I would guess that at least 20 points of that 41 percent is due to Youtube.
Which is ironic, given that it probably hurts Google the most. For a long time
I held out but after learning about ad-malware and being bothered by Youtube's
15th ad when I just wanted to listen to music, I just said screw it.

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digi_owl
Didn't know these blockers could handle youtube video ads.

And if you really want to listen to music undisturbed, why not get a Spotify
subscription?

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3pt14159
Spotify doesn't (or at least didn't when I tried it) work that well in Canada.
I had a paid Rdio subscription, but the service kept getting worse. The only
thing that let me play what I wanted to play was Youtube.

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netcan
Sounds like an interesting guy.

I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed
frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn
p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their
advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was
worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it
is/was until the American’s ‘National Brands’ complex matured. It was all
nearly impossible to estimate beforehand.

So… I think VC’s are making some sort of a bet that news = attention =
advertising revenue. It’s vague, but that’s to be expected. It’s also not an
arbitrary connection being made between media and software. The economic
difference between Gangnam Style and Charlie Bit Me is that Psy has something
to sell that is valuable once recognizable enough. The exchange rate for
popularity to money is fairly arbitrary and difficult to determine in advance.

In any case, I think they as a business are doing the right thing. We need
companies doing their job for the most part. 5% chance at a 20X return can’t
be the way everyone does business.

OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some
difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is
investigative journalism is it not? Otherwise, it’s just writers clarifying
and putting their own perspective on existing work. It’s investigative in the
sense that they talk to experts, I suppose. But, I still get the feeling
they’re in the section of the complex which is most easy to solve.

Right now you can read the economist and get up to speed on Yemen, The Iran
Deal, British Elections, and various smaller topics in the same economist
style. They are not in the business of exploring and upsetting and revealing.
I’m not worried that this kind of reporting is something we’ll lack for.

Anyway, one of the things that did impress me is a lack of a common Old News
complaint that people _should_ pay for journalism, that it _should_ be funded
somehow and that things are not allowed to change in ways that jeopardise the
way they do things. I spoke to a journalist recently that was all complaints
about how no one wants to pay for news anymore.

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ghaff
>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some
difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is
investigative journalism is it not?

It's a reasonable point that The Economist isn't really in the business of
breaking news. I had never really thought about it but you're right. I'm sure
they wouldn't be opposed to doing so but it's not their focus. (Not that deep
investigative stories form a large part of any magazine's or newspaper's
focus.)

However, the breadth of what The Economist covers and its very solid writing
is--in the aggregate--pretty hard to emulate. It's hard in the sense that you
need to pay for a lot of experienced journalists and editors who write well.
Individual stories and columns aren't hard but the whole weekly package is.
You could probably say the same thing about The Wall Street Journal for that
matter.

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netcan
That's just it, that kind of writing is somewhat peripheral to the core of
journalism, at least the definition of journalism which is an institution
essential to democracy. It's more stylistically similar to an academic writing
a public consumption book chronicling events of the last year than it is to
reports from a journalist currently embedded with the propaganda arm of ISIS
in Syria.

One can be done from your office at the university, perhaps making extensive
use of skype and good contacts.

I have no problem with the economist, I read it. I just don't expect that this
kind of writing will be in danger, regardless of the business environment.

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ghaff
I agree up to a point. There is a lot of value in curating expertise and
bringing it together in one quality place.

That said, for kicks I looked through The Economist's media directory and it
is indeed pretty London-centric. While I have no doubt that its correspondents
are quite knowledgable about their beats (and I assume have plenty of good
contacts), it's not like The Economist has a lot of big foreign bureaus.

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draugadrotten
Previous discussion and comments.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9306286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9306286)

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keithpeter
$2.49 per _month_ sounds ok for a professionally edited daily e-mail about
European relevant news. I can't seem to just pay them for the e-mail version.
Seems an odd way to go about getting decent writing paid for.

Edit: downvoters please explain reasons.

My argument is that I'm trying to make what is essentially a micro-payment for
good quality writing delivered using a universal protocol (e-mail).

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freedomnow
True liberty and happiness will only be found in a completely free market.

~~~
netcan
True bliss can only come from unwavering obedience and love for the gods.

