Tuesday 8th June: The forever war of publishers vs. Google will never end

June 08, 2021

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

This will surprise you - Google is under attack for antitrust practices. That is undoubtedly why it's tacitly paying for the best possible press around their practices by agreeing deals with publishers after years of arguing that the value proposition flows the other way. None of that is a shock, so let me instead pose this question: when will enough be enough for publishers?

“We have agreed on a set of commitments to make it easier for publishers to make use of data and use our tools with other ad technologies,” said Maria Gomri, Google’s legal director in France in a blog post. “We’re committed to working collaboratively with regulators and investing in new products and technologies that give publishers more choice and better results when using our platforms".

But we know that publishers aren't totally happy with the amount they're receiving, and that even the bigger players are still jostling to get a bigger part of the pie. So regardless of whether you think publishers or the Duopoly are in the right around payments (I don't think either are wholly indefensible or laudable in this respect) - it's very tough to see any definitive end to this debate.

Take this one with a pinch of salt, obviously, as there's a gulf between what people say they will pay for versus what they will actually open their wallets for. Overall, though, this is decent news for publishers (other than the fact the youngest cohort say they're least likely to pay for news but shhh).

As we discussed in this week's episode of Media Voices, we're not entirely convinced by Twitter Blue. Even for the relatively tiny price point we're not sure it's enough of a change in its own right. But if you're a little confused about what those new paid-for options are, this handy explainer from The Drum's Kendra Clark will set you right.

The clone wars continue, as YouTube's TikTok c̶o̶p̶y̶ rival is expanding into new territories. There are questions about how exactly this will work in practice, but for publishers the real question is how to decide which of the constant clones is worth investing time in.

This week's episode:

In this week’s episode we hear from Decanter’s Editor in Chief Chris Maillard about the challenge of refreshing Future’s newly-acquired wine brand – without alienating its incredibly loyal readership

For publishers with a well established content workflow, adding podcasts can seem like a daunting task. But, as this Conversations episode demonstrates, those publishers already have what is needed to create and distribute podcasts that add value to your audience and business alike.