So, yesterday Andrew Sullivan announced that his blog is going independent on a subscription + “pay what you want” + no ads + freemium + hit meter basis. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo did something similar awhile ago. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have had “paywalls” or something similar for some time, although they all still have ads. Sullivan’s argument seems to be that the only sustainable model for internet publishing is for readers to pay for content either on a subscription or, perhaps in the future, micro-payment model. I don’t really want to argue that point here.
However, during the discussions about his plan the somewhat famous quote in the title was mentioned. I think it was initially about facebook or instragram, but applies pretty widely to most media, social or otherwise. It seems to pretty strongly imply something unseemly about “free” news services.
So, I got to thinking - is it true? And if so, should I care? Is something like NPR (funded through government subsidies and membership payments) somehow fundamentally different from CNN (funded primarily through advertising)? What implications does it have for how news and commentary is produced and consumed?
I think it goes further than that - even if you pay for the product, that doesn’t mean that you’re really the important customer. Magazines are a good example of this, as I understand. The subscription fees or newsstand prices that readers pay only cover a small portion of costs. Magazines are really in the business of ‘delivering’ readers to their advertisers.
And no, it isn’t necessarily unseemly. It’s something worth bearing in mind whatever media you consume.
The message board is different, in that it’s a straight choice. You can get it free, and be a product delivered to the advertisers. Or you can pay your subscription, go ad-free, and get the board as a product. It doesn’t appear to be both.
Of course a message board is a bit different, no? I mean, there is no (or at least very little) content being provided in exchange for the ad revenue - it’s merely to keep the lights on, right?
Certainly nobody providing the content (the posters) is altering their submissions in order to keep ad revenue high. Whereas CNN almost certainly is.
One thought I had is that even in a subscription-based model (where the readers are paying for the product) the goal of the content provider is still basically the same - drive high readership.
It’s just that now the provider is trying to drive readership that may buy a subscription (or renew an existing one) rather than drive the readership that his advertisers would like to see. This is almost certainly a different demographic.
Similarly, an ad-based site probably doesn’t care how much time a reader spends on the site - it only takes a second to get an ad impression, and I’m pretty sure online advertisers don’t take persistence into account. But a sub-based service probably does care how long a reader spends on the site as someone who spends 30 minutes is more likely to subscribe than somebody that spends 5 minutes skimming headlines.
If you’re a poster on SDMB, you’re both the product and the content-provider. Which demonstrates what’s wrong with Sullivan’s argument - for every one person who demands payment for his content, there’s hundreds who’re willing to provide it for free.
My understanding was that The Straight Dope as a whole turns a small profit. I don’t know how much of that profit comes from the message board, but my impression isn’t that the message board is some sort of public service.
I read free news sources all the time, including the free bits of paywall sites like Time and the NYT. Information that’s buried under a subscription has, in my opinion, a weaker impact than what’s freely available. In Jonathon Kay’s book, Among the Truthers, he reckons that a stumbling block for debunking conspiracy theories is that the nonsense is all available for free, while scientific journals cost money to view. Possibly that supports Sullivan, but I’d say that it would be better if there was a way for the good information to be available for free as well.
I’m wondering how I could possibly be the product on a wiki that I browse anonymously, though. I might see some ads. I see ads every time I walk down a city street, too. Doesn’t make me feel like turning any tricks.
I always find it amusing when people give the “I’m not paying for Hulu Plus! I have to pay for it, AND they have ads!” line. They save themselves the $9 a month, then go back to their $40-$120 cable service…which they have to pay for, and has ads.
Similarly, the “no one makes quality shows, just reality ones that appeal to the masses (implied: of idiots)!” or “they cancelled my show without a decent ending!” bits. Again: viewers aren’t the customer, they’re the product. Advertisers are the customer. It’s pretty much always been that way. Advertisers want number of eyeballs; they don’t care about the actual content unless it interferes with the process of making money (by getting them boycotted, say) beyond “how many people of what demographics are watching it?”
And which, presumably, they find worth the extra money because it offers more.
Agree with you here. Anybody bitching about the quality of television today is welcome to go watch the crap I grew up watching.
They’re not the customer, they’re not the product, they’re the viewers. What’s stupid about the quote is that it’s an OR statement. Most of my life I’m not a customer or a product. When I’m buying something, I’m a customer. When I’m getting hired, I’m a product. When I’m working, I’m a producer. The company that I work for? My customer.
Right, because advertisers all live in bunkers on Mars. They have no children. They are completely unaffected by the side effects of their endeavors.
People do occasionally do things because they think it’s right and not just for money. The amount of cheap, ill-considered contempt for humanity sometimes exhibited around here is a worry.
It’s mostly true, though there is some media that is genuinely free.
The biggest ones I can think of off the top of my head is a video game: DOTA 2.
The game is free and there’s no advertising. Money on the game is made through the voluntary purchase of cosmetic items that provide no gameplay advantage whatsoever. And yet Valve is making money hand over fist.
There are also a few Web Comics who make money off of online storefronts and donations, and who have very little or no advertising.
Which is why respected news companies have a wall between editorial and sales. Not a perfect one, of course, but the goal is to prevent this issue from affecting what is covered.
No, the goal is really to drive high numbers of the readers the advertiser wants to see, assuming you sell ads. N high income New Yorker readers are worth more to their advertisers than 10N National Enquirer readers.
I think in this case it is often to staunch the flow to free views. All the print subscriptions I have (New Yorker, Times) come with free access to the on-line version. Internet ad rates are just not high enough to pay the bills.
I was on the editorial board of an on-line portal for a technical society, and we cared a lot about persistence. Yeah, the number of clicks counts for the advertisers, but if you keep someone on your site longer you get to serve them more ads. The bodies of stories have ads also - someone skimming headlines only will never see them.
Yeah, the OP’s quote is wrong. Or at least misleading. You’re the product whenever a company finds a way to make money off of you indirectly. If they can also make money off you directly, by charging you, they will. But being a product has nothing to do with whether you also pay.
It’s not much of a wall. Generally the ads are pulled for companies that may be embarassed by current news. So if there’s an airline crash, the airline ads will be pulled for a few days. The news coverage goes on, the advertiser avoids embarassment. It isn’t a perfect system though, I read a blurb about a Connecticut newspaper advertising a gun show next to a Sandy Hook story the other day.
NPR sells advertising, of a particular variety. And I suspect they get more pledge money during high listener programs than during low audience ones.
That we are the product is so trivially true that it seems odd to argue about it. “Free” TV runs not only on viewership but on demographics, so I’m a less valuable viewer for most programs than my kids. There are tons of “free” trade magazines which exist to collect readers of a certain type (working in the industry) for advertisers. You have to describe your job to get a free subscription to these, not that they are all that rigorous about screening.