Economics of Digital Media - Ladson

Newspapers Still Largest Revenue Segment Response

The Pew Research Center article that broke down revenue amounts of different news platforms was interesting. I did not realize that TV-based news generates less than half the revenue of the U.S. newspaper sector, has this always been true? If I were to take an educated guess I would say yes, because there was even more newspapers before this time period. Thinking about the trend toward more polarization in news, particularly TV news, I would think that the TV platform would allow for more targeted advertising than traditional newspapers that try to stay balanced.

I also thought it was interesting that half of the revenue of cable news was due to license fees. As more people ditch cable for streaming services, cable news faces another possible leak in its revenue stream.

Spending on Native Advertising Soars Response

The Business Insider article on native advertising says that consumers hold a generally positive attitude toward native advertising, really? I wonder if it is because they do not realize it is an ad? Or maybe they have a positive attitude because these native ads have been tailored to items they interested in purchasing? Or maybe it is because they are comparing the ads to “traditional” popup ads? Besides a few funny animal commercials, I do not hear much “positive” about traditional ads so I would like to know more.

FCC’s Enforcement Policy Statement Response

While it is encouraging that the FCC is current and has updated its deceptively formatted advertisements to include digital media, the policy seems to focus on the deception of the format, versus the content of the ad. Maybe the content policy is in a different section? And I wonder about enforcement, do FCC officials actively go out and monitor ads, or do they only respond to consumer complaints? I also did not realize the lengths encyclopedia salesman went through to make a sale, were encyclopedia sets that lucrative? Based on sales tactics described in the policy, we all owe Wikipedia and digital libraries ‘thank yous’ for saving us from elaborate encyclopedia salesman tactics. 

Paying With Privacy Response

I agree with the authors’ point that “there seems to be a strange silence surrounding the ethics of native advertising.” I did not realize that newspaper sites had more tracking than the rest of the web. That would explain why advertising for a dress I was looking at kept haunting me when I was on the site of a local newspaper; at the time I thought it was odd, maybe that I found the dress online in a different way than I remembered. I did not make the time to connect the dots, or maybe I just accepted that my activity was all connected and didn’t want to spend the energy getting to the root of it.

Toward the end of the article, the authors suggest that they do not wish the economic model supporting journalism to collapse, but that earlier they compared news sites to “a clown car” makes me wonder.

Facebook to Tell Brands Who’s Near Their Stores Response/Connection to Outside Material

The people who run Facebook are superb at finding ways to make money. Maybe we should have them brainstorm how to save the “news” industry. Sure, it would involve them taking over and reaping the benefits, but what can’t this company do? They already have people in some third world countries thinking Facebook is the Internet.

Digital News -- Revenue: Fact Sheet Response

The article mentions a different report that said on FB and Twitter the percentage growth of mobile display advertising equaled the percentage decline of desktop display ads,  are desktops going the way of the dinosaur? Surely not yet, but companies are moving away from them, is it just because mobile has the biggest room for growth and companies want to seem innovative and on top of trends? Earlier reports we have read said that only a small portion of people even use Twitter, I bet the portion of people who use desktops is extraordinarily high.