

News is a lousy business for Google too - ALee
http://cdixon.org/2010/03/07/news-is-a-lousy-business-for-google-too/

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patio11
Does somebody have a link to the forward-thinking newspaperman whose thesis
was that the newspaper business model was fundamentally that they had a
regional monopoly on social permission to mail a bunch of ads direct to your
doorstop in such a manner that you would actually read them? I saw it on HN
first, I think, and it dovetails with this post very well.

Google is now the business with social permission to beam advertising directly
into your brain.

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tptacek
Bill Wyman's _Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing_ may fit the bill:

[http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-
reaso...](http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-
newspapers-are-failing)

 _Some people liked the news, sure; most thought they were paying for it. And
some papers spent more money on news than they had to. But the papers weren’t
selling the news. They were selling ads and charging a lot of money for them
because of one thing only: They held an informal monopoly on a societal
convention whereby they deposited those ads—around which they wrapped some
reporting, some of it serious, some of it fluff—on subscribers’ driveways._

Wyman is a long-time arts journalist and editor. He's also the author of one
of my favorite bits on San Francisco:

<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/11/03/sf/index.html>

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patio11
That is it, thanks.

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btilly
News is only lousy for Google because Google insists on relevant, targeted,
advertising.

Compare in the pre-internet world with CNN.com. They had no product except
news. Yet lots of companies are very happy to advertise with them. Yes, they
know that the ads aren't well targeted. But branding ads aren't supposed to
be.

If Google was willing to accept a lower tier of branding ads, they could make
more money from news.

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aheilbut
Or if they are willing to use identity and behavioral targeting to direct
interesting and targeted ads that needn't be relevant to the particular page a
user is browsing.

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morisy
They are willing to do that: It's a large reason they acquired DoubleClick.
But yes, this is one of the more promising areas of development for ad serving
companies, privacy concerns aside. I recently moderated a panel where the
panelists explain that, without anything but an IP address, they could tell if
a reader had browsed a car site, a new parenting site, etc. and then target
ads on a completely unrelated website with that info.

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stcredzero
The problem with the news business is making people aware that information
delivery is separate from journalism. A lot of people want the latter. A lot
of "journalism" has devolved into trash, however. There is a big opportunity
to make money with an easily accessible quality product.

