Verden ifølge Google

Mikrobetaling er ikke vejen frem for aviserne. Det mener Google cheføkonom Hal Varian. Og det har han skrevet et blogindlæg om.

Han mener derimod, det er brugerinddragelse, der skal redde medierne og generere trafik.

Og så har han en ret god analyse af søgemaskinernes indflydelse på avisernes indtægter.

"Many readers go directly to their favorite news site, but a good fraction use search engines to access news specific news topics. According to comScore, clicks from search engines account for 35-40% of traffic to major U.S. news sites. Since most newspaper ads are priced on a per-impression basis, this means that 35-40% of major U.S. newspaper online revenue is coming from search engine referrals. That is a big fraction of online advertising revenue but, as we saw above, online ad revenue is only about 5% of the total," skriver Varian og fortsætter:

"Furthermore, the real money in search engine advertising is in the highly commercial verticals like Shopping, Health, and Travel. Unfortunately, most of the search clicks that go to newspapers are in categories like Sports, News & Current Events, and Local, which don’t attract the biggest spending advertisers."

Det betyder imidlertid problemer for aviserne, der aldrig har levet af nyheder:

"This isn't so surprising: the fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news. They’ve made money from the special interest sections on topics such as Automotive, Travel, Home & Garden, Food & Drink, and so on. These sections attract contextually targeted advertising, which is much more effective than non-targeted advertising. After all, someone reading the Automotive section is likely to be more interested in cars than the average consumer, so advertisers will pay a premium to reach those consumers," skriver han og fortsætter:

"Traditionally, the ad revenue from these special sections has been used to cross-subsidize the core news production. Nowadays internet users go directly to websites like Edmunds, Orbitz, Epicurious, and Amazon to look for products and services in specialized areas. Not surprisingly, advertisers follow those eyeballs, which makes the traditional cross-subsidization model that newspapers have used far more difficult."

Samtidig fejer Varian lige for egen dør og fastslår, at det ikke er internettets skyld, at aviserne lider. Deres deroute begyndte allerede i halvtredserne, siger han.

// © MPH