Publishing Content vs. Delivering it

Ads don’t care who made the content, they just want to cozy up with whoever is delivering it, and unfortunately for content creators, so far in the history of the Internet that’s rarely them. Newspapers have lost their role as content deliverer to Google and Facebook and with it went the ad dollars.

This is not yet another article pointing out that ad dollars have shifted from publishers to aggregators. That’s already well understood as are several of the reasons why. The point is there’s one reason that I think is both important and under-appreciated, and that’s this: ads within and around content do not work well enough, whereas ads in lists of content do.

Whether it’s delivered by a third party (e.g. search, social, individual curators) or by its creator (e.g. publishers’ sites, apps, feeds, and newsletters), a list of articles is a great place to put an ad, because: 1) the ad, being just another item in the list, is native to the format; 2) the audience member trusts that the list contains interesting things, ads and all; and 3) they’ve come to the list to click on things.

In contrast to a list, an individual article is not a good place to put an ad, because: 1) the non native format results in a mental cost to switch from story to ad; 2) it has to grab attention by being annoying, which has a brand trade-off; and 3) the reader has come to the article to read, not to click on things. The only way to make any money with this (already annoying) type of ad is an extreme amount of volume, which favors quantity over quality and is dependent on which way the algorithmic winds are blowing on distribution platforms. That’s not a good basis for a sustainable business.

Google’s public data makes for a nice illustration of the effectiveness divide in ad formats. Since 2004 (when they were almost identical) revenue from search ads (native in a list) has taken off while display ads in and around content has grown poorly, relative to the Internet at large:

Even worse for content creators, within that red line, the growth of mobile is actually hiding decreases in revenue from ads on publishers’ content. From their 10-K:

“From 2015 to 2016, the growth was primarily driven by strength in programmatic advertising buying as well as strength in AdMob, offset by a decline in our traditional AdSense business”

It’s taking time, but the money is finding its way toward the more productive ad formats for written content. Similarly rational principles play out in other mediums as well. Radio and Spotify both act as curated lists of audio clips, with ads delivered in series (not mid song!). Podcasts and TV have format driven benefits and also contort their longer episodes to have commercial breaks (cliff hangers and all) in a way written pieces do not. And, all audio and video has the benefit of capturing undivided attention for ads by pausing the content to deliver it.

Across all types of content, the consistent aspect is this: the important thing is having permission to deliver content. That is, having an audience. Visitors (i.e. “page views”) are not audience members until they grant you the permission to deliver future content.

Back to written content, where how we get out of this mess will mirror how we got into it: by redefining what’s important. Newspapers had a monopoly over the most important thing — physical distribution — until digitization made it a non factor. Distribution still happens, it’s just a given, not a big deal that needs printing presses and trucks. That shook things up and moved the profits to Google and Facebook, who now control the new most important thing: article discovery.

For a particular slice of the web — high quality professional content — discovery is no longer the most important thing. Trust is. If readers become audience members of a handful of trusted sources on the topics they care about, article discovery will be made a non factor. If I find a New York Times article because I was consuming a New York Times feed, discovery still happens, it’s just a given, not a big deal that needs algorithms and Page Rank. Let’s shake it back up.

How? Part 2, A Plan to Shift Profits Back to Publishers, is the thing you want.