The New York Times have an interesting article on Google’s plans to sell advertising space in the print editions of 50 major newspapers.
This strikes me as an extremely unusual development, to put it mildly.
The newspaper industry has already suffered terrible losses as a result of Google, who have been taking away both readers and advertisers. Yet here is an opportunity for them to recover some of their losses, while bizarrely feeding the very system responsible for their losses.
My two favourite quotes from the article:
“Tom Phillips, who runs Google’s print operations, said the company was attracted by the $48 billion spent every year in the United States on newspaper advertising.”
Me too for that matter.
And the best:
“Google, nonetheless, is trying to position itself as a friend of the newspapers.”
So the new guy in town comes and sets up business, and within a few years is taking most of your own income and revenue. Your own business suffers, profits plummet and the smaller companies in your field start dropping out. Time to start worrying.
Then the very person responsible for your problems comes and offers to send you some new people, but they take a piece of the action.
With friends like that, who needs ruthless enemies?
How’s that for weird. Wear down your competition, then just before they fall, throw them a lifeline they can’t refuse.
Odder still is the mixing of the old and the new.
The reason why many newspapers have seen their advertising income fall is simple. Why would you pay hundreds of dollars for a tiny little box ad that’s lost in hundreds just like it. How many people will even notice it? Especially when you can pay a whole lot less for the opportunity to push it right in front of the people who are searching for what you offer. Best of all, you only pay for when someone sees it and acts on it.
Why aren’t the newspapers seeing that they not only need to compete with Google, but clearly have the potential to do so, otherwise Google wouldn’t be interested in the first place?
I don’t understand what Google are doing here, and I don’t understand why the newspapers are cleaning the shoes of the army that marched in and occupied their homes. Oh well, the article makes interesting reading anyway.
Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google
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