Don’t get too close to Google and Facebook warns ABC News boss
Gaven Morris, the ABC’s director of news, analysis and investigations, has welcomed the wave of media company restructures while warning of the dangers of getting too close to digital platforms like Google and Facebook.
Speaking at a panel hosted by the UTS Centre for Media Transition in Sydney, Morris also called on Google to increase its advertising share for media ventures as a simple way of resolving the problem of monetising journalism.
Google could do more to help journalism by increasing ad revenue going to publishers said the ABC’s Morris
Happy to be corrected, but If memory serves me, Google’s payout to publishers gets bundled in the accounts with ‘traffic acquisition costs’
Now TAC has been steadily increasing as a percentage of revenue due to the structural changes associated with the shift to mobile (plus Apple increasingly holding them to ransom to maintain default search on Safari)
Investors and analysts have well noted this trend.
So… romantic notions that journalism will be saved via Google generously and magnanimously volunteering to increase their TAC when, from their point of view, the world is saturated in a content bubble — such notions are farcical.
Whilst the ABC most def has a stake in the health of journalism to be sure, publishers who actually have to derive income from peddling advertising are better seeking council among themselves as to where new earn will materialise.