Advertising, Coming Soon To Medium
Hi. Welcome to the Internet. Here’s your Terms of Service. Would you like ads with that content?
Plenty of web ink has been spilled over what technology companies are allowed to do with the content its users generate, whether it’s advertising, tracking or reporting. As it’s de rigueur to talk about those platforms on said platforms—until it nears Ouroborosian logic— I’d also like to throw this legalese from Medium’s recent ToS email back onto Medium.
“The bedrock relationship between you and Medium won’t change. You own your content.” Bedrock, ownership and continuity all sound lovely to me but then the notification continues, “We might use that content to promote Medium, and we might use it in connection with advertising on Medium. None of this is new.”
Oh? A major revision of the ToS which adds advertising certainly seems new. But few on Medium seem to have noticed the ad policy update.
Git the Diff?
Some months ago, owing to feelings of disempowerment I signed off as a Medium power user. There isn’t much of a story here that hasn’t been told elsewhere. Writing and publishing take time and money and I was as dry as California is in drought so I stopped what I was doing and spent two months traveling lush Sri Lanka. Internet fame simply doesn’t pay the bills despite Youtube stardom myths.
How Corporations Profit From Black Teens’ Viral Content and The Sad Economics of Internet Fame informed my decision then to shutter Absurdist.
equally mentions financials in her farewell. Admittedly, my business acumen wasn’t sharp enough to advertise but sponsored posts do pay the bills.Point being, that if you read the ToS update closely, you’d have noticed that that in exchange for use of Medium Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising. It’s a vague clause but clearly the first time advertising appears in Medium’s ToS. Could advertising revenue generated from your content support a better Medium?
Faustian Bargains
I was attending a Fusion panel on how personal data could be used for prejudice when
turned to me and asked, Hasn’t anyone heard of a Faustian Bargain? I said, Do you think anyone here reads the Terms of Service? Traditionally, the people who use such platforms are little informed or privileged over how their data is used.Now before you gather your mob and raise your pitchforks, I’m not suggesting that the new terms are a pact with the digidevil. What I am suggesting is that this could concern Medium users in the future. Much like other platforms, it could mean that writers will see no monetary rewards from advertising revenue or it could also mean profit sharing. It could mean banner ads or it could also mean sponsored posts. None of this is clear yet.
in his interview with Advertising Age back last year said, “All our revenue projects are pretty experimental at this point, though, so I can’t claim we know exactly what the model will be for the future.” And though literati hoped content sites would develop other new monetary methods, especially given the proliferation ad-blockers, Medium‘s shift in their ToS echo what Tumblr founder once said, “We’re pretty opposed to advertising. It really turns our stomachs”, until it didn’t.Whether
capitalizes on or for its content creators remains to be seen, but here comes the advertising. Turn off your ad-blockers.
