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- Friday 12th May: Will tech's 'signal loss' be publishers' opportunity?
Friday 12th May: Will tech's 'signal loss' be publishers' opportunity?
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Good explanation here from Jason Kint on why there's an opportunity for publishers as privacy-centrism takes hold on the internet. I don't necessarily agree that there's an open goal again for publishers to suddenly retake their primacy, but Kint's put together a strong argument that the digital advertising landscape is now so destabilised that anyone can come out on top again, rather than having to deal with platforms:
"Targeted ads have consistently comprised more than 97% of the company’s revenues for more than a decade. This was never clearer than in 2021: When Apple stepped up its privacy efforts, Facebook lost nearly half of its market value, which the company’s CFO attributed to “signal loss.” That loss continues to haunt the company’s fortunes as the company scrambles for a new moat to protect its empire."
More interestingly, I think, is his point about what the rise of LLMs will do for the perception of 'signals' vs. 'noise' online. He says "such models must differentiate between things learned through Financial Times versus Reddit, Washington Post versus Twitter". Now that is absolutely true - but I also think that takes us right back to the projects that aim to measure news quality from individual publishers. We can't say as a rule that every newspaper is more signal than noise, because we know that simply isn't true.
I wish we could decide if we were in dire financial straits or not. The uncertainty is killing me! But ITV - which I personally use as a bellwether for how commercial TV is performing - has revealed a big ol' slump in its ad revenues, despite viewership remaining strong and its OTT ITVX service doing decent numbers.
More cronyism at the BBC. Even after the departure of Richard Shape from the chairperson's... chair... the Tories that have been parachuted into the BBC continue to have a malign influence over what should be the public service broadcaster. This one particularly rankles, though, as a Remainer - that pernicious lie was what swayed some of my relatives to vote to Leave.
We're going to be arguing about whether CNN was right to do this or not for ages. But one thing that's already becoming horrifying clear is that at least sections of the media has learned n o t h i n g from the past few years, particularly around how to platform and contextualise divisive and potentially dangerous people. As long as it gets eyeballs, some sections of the media will just do it, regardless of the potential damage to the public.
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