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AMP has irreparably damaged publishers’ trust in Google-led initiatives — wptavern.com

There's currently an antitrust lawsuit against Google, specifically involving their AMP project. It alleges, among other things, that AMP pages brought 40% less revenue to publishers, and that the tech giant throttles the load time of non-AMP ads in order to give AMP ads a boost.

Even the publishers who adopted AMP struggled to get ad views. One report suggested that publishers actually lost revenue associated with ads loading much slower than the actual content. "The aim of AMP is to load content first and ads second," said a Google spokesperson, with the assurance that they were working on making ads faster.

It's messy reading, and it's hard to see how Google can be trusted with all the other (great) initiatives it's leading given what happened here. But publishers I've spoken to have found AMP largely a positive experience both in terms of revenue and traffic. Have you got any of your own thoughts or experiences to add with AMP? Just reply to this email - I'd love to know.

‘We want to really localize’: McClatchy tries out pre-roll in the audio versions of its articles — digiday.com

The audio players displayed near the byline on McClatchy's article pages are getting clickthrough rates of 5% (that's high, for clickthrough). Completion rates for the pre-roll ads are at 99%, showing that people will listen to an ad to get to the content they want. Once again, if a thing exists, sales teams will try and put ads in it.

Fox bets big on blockchain — www.axios.com

Fox plans to double down on its investments in blockchain technology by introducing more NFTs and digital collectibles for its shows and franchises in the coming months. "This is a revenue generating business," they told Axios. If people are paying this kind of money for digital assets, go all in. But there's no way this bubble won't burst. Next up...NFT ads?!

Do your subscribers actually want paywalled content? — simonowens.substack.com

Simon Owens posed a question to some of his followers last week: would they pay $10 a month for a newsletter/article subscription with exclusive content, or would you pay $5 a month for all the content to be free, but to support the writer? Most people chose the latter, and it's a trend that other creators are seeing, including us with our Ko-Fi page. Simon looks at what the factors are driving this trend, and what to consider if you're thinking about eliminating your paywall.

This week's podcast:

Global Director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network James Fahn on why everyone should be a climate change journalist — voices.media

This week’s interview is with James Fahn, Global Director of Internews’ Environmental Programs and its Earth Journalism Network. James spoke with us as he sets out with a group of journalists from the global south to cover COP26 from their own perspectives.

Launch event: Media Moments 2021 - Media Voices — voices.media

Join Media Voices, What’s New in Publishing and Sovrn in a virtual event to launch this year’s Media Moments report, followed by a panel of publishing experts discussing how they will be navigating challenges and opportunities in 2022 and beyond.