Your readers are paying you — with attention

by Mathew on November 10, 2009 · Comments

Rupert Murdoch, that sly old rascal, caused a minor Twitter-storm recently, with an interview in which he suggested that News Corp. might remove its websites from Google, which he has described in the past as a “thief” that takes content without asking (Google, for its part, said that it would be more than happy to oblige Rupert’s whims in this regard). As Mike Masnick at Techdirt also noted, Murdoch even went so far as to argue that “fair use” principles were likely illegal, and would eventually be proven so. You have to give the guy credit for knowing a soundbite when he sees one.

Mark Cuban, another crusty old billionaire (although just a pup compared to Rupe), used these remarks as a jumping-off point for his own flight of rhetorical fancy, in which he argued that social-recommendation networks such as Twitter and Facebook were far more important than Google, and that therefore Rupert was right and all the “information-must-be-free bigots” who criticized him must be wrong. But as Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat) pointed out on Twitter after I posted a link to Cuban’s rant, all the social-recommendations in the world aren’t going to help Rupert if he insists on putting his content behind pay walls.

David Santori made a similar point in a comment on one of my paywall-related posts at the Nieman Journalism Lab. As he put it:

“overlooked in all this is the social aspect: any web item that interests or amuses or intrigues me, I want to share. And if I can’t share it promptly and easily — in an email link or on my blog or Facebook “wall” or in a tweet — I will be frustrated and irked just in proportion to the degree of interest I felt in the item.”

and

“The NYT registration barrier was in fact a micropayment system, one in which the payment was extracted in the form of the reader’s time and keystrokes to log in whenever they got a link to a useful story.”

I think both David and Steve make an excellent point, one which publishers ignore at their peril. Readers online may not pay you directly with currency, but they pay you with their time and attention (the foundation of the so-called “attention economy”) and it’s in your interest to make things as easy for them as possible — which is just one strike amongst many against pay walls. And if Mark Cuban is right (which I think he is) about social recommendations becoming increasingly important as a way to find valuable content, what happens when someone shares a link to your pay-walled content?

What happens is a potential reader runs headfirst into that wall, or has to jump through all sorts of hoops to read it (i.e., check to see if there is a Google News loophole), and that is a significant disincentive to a) read anything further, or b) share any links themselves. It’s the classic cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face problem: you try to generate incremental revenue through restricted access, but by doing so you deprive your content of even more valuable re-distribution through recommendation networks, which in the long run reduces your traffic and thus your revenue.

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ianbetteridge

There's two problems with your approach, Mathew. First, attention doesn't pay the bills and it certainly doesn't give your shareholders any dividend. Unless you monetize that attention, all it is doing is costing you money in server bills. Attention is like window shopping: valuable, in the sense that you want some of it, but essentially valueless if you can't convert it.

Which brings me on to my second quibble. When you say "...which in the long run reduces your traffic and thus your revenue" you're falling into the classic trap of assuming that more traffic = more revenue. It doesn't, and, if you equate traffic to paper readership, it didn't even in the era of print.

If traffic is undifferentiated - if all you know about the person on the other side of the screen is that they've hit a single page from a search query - it's just not that attractive to high-paying advertisers. It might be valuable to some advertisers in CPC terms, for example if they're searching for "best mobile phones" and end up on your page you might be able to get decent CPC out of them. But if your focus is CPM, then the way to push up your rates is have less traffic, but know a lot more about them.

In other words, create "niches", and attract as much of that niche as possible - while actually discouraging traffic from outside that niche. Undifferentiated traffic can damage your ability to demand the highest possible CPM. Advertisers will be more interested in putting their ad in front of 10,000 high-spending consumers in their target demographic than 1 million users who have come to your site from 10,000 different search terms, read one page, and headed off.

In fact, of course, this is Internet 101. Look at the most successful content sites on the web in terms of revenue, and they are based on appealing to coherent niches, of varying sizes. Murdoch's challenge on a content level is to see if existing newspaper properties are, or can be made into, niches - and I expect some radical changes in the newsrooms if he's to make that work. Can those niches be large enough to give eyeballs, while being coherent enough to deliver CPM?

mathewi

Thanks for the comment, Ian. I get the monetization piece -- that's
obviously where the "economy" part of "attention economy" come in. I'm not
some kind of Internet utopian who thinks money will magically fall from the
sky. But how do people know that your content is valuable to them if they
can't see it or read it or share it with others? That's part of what
generates the value in the first place.

Like the commenter on my Nieman post, I find it intensely frustrating not to
be able to share a link with someone because of a pay wall. So not only
does that frustrate me, a dedicated user or customer of that content site,
but it frustrates every *potential* user or customer as well. How is that a
good strategy?

My point is that social recommendation networks and other tools of "social
media" are a crucial part of how media entities gain attention -- which is a
pretty scarce commodity. To use your store analogy, how are people supposed
to know that they want to buy your content or services if your windows are
boarded up and you don't let anyone inside the store without charging them?

ianbetteridge

I think your point on inaccessibility to social media is a good one, and certainly one that Mark Cuban ought to have addressed. I'm certain that part of the answer from Murdoch's perspective would be " through MySpace" :)

To answer your point about "how do people know that your content is valuable to them if they can't see it or read it or share it with others?" my guess is that Murdoch would argue this is where cross-media ownership and brand building come in.

If you're a Fox TV subscriber (which is already a known quantity in terms of "who they are") it should be easy enough to package that up with access to Fox online - and there will be constant promotion of the "more on Foxnews.com" kind on TV. Ditto newspapers, and radio stations, and all the other media channels that News Corp own.

Murdoch would probably argue this would be incredibly attractive to advertisers, because it allows him (and he'd pitch it as only him) to deliver extremely well-targeted, coherent audiences - people who regard themselves as "Foxnews viewers" in the same way people think of themselves as "Guardian readers" or whatever.

Now I'm not saying he's right - but from an advertiser's perspective, if he can tie it all together it starts to look like a credible pitch.

AGORACOM - George

I read Mark Cuban's post and his responses to subsequent comments. Yes, he is 100% correct that traffic does not equal revenue once your ad inventory runs out.

However, putting up a wall prevents a site from turning me into revenue when it either has more ad inventory, loses page views due to lost readers, or has figured out another way to generate revenue from me.

Conclusion? Google is not Rup's problem. He needs to come up with unique/better ways to monetize that incoming traffic.

Buzz Bishop

It's something I call "the paradox of free."

http://www.cyberbuzz.com/2009/10/02/why-informa...

Music was able to sneak behind the iTunes paywall effectively because it took work to find clean versions of music. Limewire is filled with malware and those who go through file sharing of music must dig deep through lists to find the right tracks that are clean. The quality isnt reliable.

News and information, on the web, cant get behind a paywall. Too many people will offer it for free. If Murdoch walls his garden, we'll go to the BBC, the CBC or elsewhere. You're exactly right that we pay with attention, and if no attention is paid to Murdoch he will find it hard to get paid with currency.

It feels right to paraphrase Reagan on a week such as this.

"Mr Murdoch! Tear down this wall!"

ianbetteridge

That is only true if news is a commodity - if there's no differentiator in value between a news story on Site A and one on Site B. In Murdoch's world, that's not true (and never has been). A story on Fox might report the same facts as a report on The Guardian, but someone who "buys" The Guardian would never go to Fox instead, even if it was free and The Guardian wasn't.

mathewi

I think news is more of a commodity than either you or Rupert wants to admit, Ian.

ianbetteridge

Well, note that I said "in Murdoch's world..." :)

My own take on it is that, at present, you're right: most news is commodity news, with very little to differentiate it. However, does it have to be that way? Consider, for example, the Daily Telegraph's expose on British MP's expenses - I suspect they got more traffic (and copy sales) from that single story than a lot of the "commodity news" they've done this year.

So perhaps the lesson should be that news sites need to do less commodity news and more original work. That would probably need less reporters - but that might be no bad thing.

markcuban

Mathew, at some point you have to make an effort to actually understand how a business works.
Sorry to be so condescending. I guess that comes with being crusty and old. (BTW, arent we about the same age ? Maybe its you that has become old and crusty ..)

But the reality is simple. In an ad supported web environment, if you arent selling anywhere near all your inventory, which is the current case for Newscorp and pretty much every news site on the net, getting more of what you arent selling isnt of much value. So there is no loss of revenue by leaving Google as a free site. @ianbettridge comments are right on

If you are behind a pay wall, the challenge is to convince the visitor there is enough value to open up their wallet. You seem to think that every Newscorp or pay for website is a silo on which a buy/not buy decision will be made. Newscorp has enough media assets, online and offline, (most with a marginal delivery value approaching zero) from which they could easily create a value proposition worth paying for.

You also seem to think that in 2009 branded websites are hard to find. This isnt 1999. Foxnews.com has done an amazing job of branding. People who like their brand of news, know exactly what it stands for and how to find it. Just as their viewers know their brand on tv and know exactly how to find it. They probably do a better job of finding and getting attention from their intended audience for each of their media brands than any media company in the world. It would be crazy for them not to take advantage of this and create a strong value proposition they can charge users for.

The value of the random disappointed user in your example is to them, close to zero. They can live with you being disappointed and losing you to another site. They know that if you havent heard of Foxnews.com or you dont identify with their brand, you arent going to make a commitment to return anyway. If you do know and identify with them, there is a good chance that you will have no problem paying to be part of their "experience"

mathewi

Thanks for the comment, Mark; always a pleasure to hear from you.
Don't read too much into the "crusty old billionaire" crack -- I was
just yanking your chain a little :-)

As far as the whole business model thing is concerned, please read my
response to Ian -- I am not some kind of business naïf, or Internet
triumphalist. And I don't think advertising is the key to making
content pay online, in part because of the factors you describe.

But the fact remains that in order to prove value, or even
successfully create it, we have to use tools like Twitter and Facebook
and yes, even Google -- not cut them off and put roadblocks in their
way. People sharing our content is one of the best marketing tools we
have available; why would we make that even harder than we do already?

You should be thanking me for saying that you're right about the power
of Twitter etc. But you don't explain how that jibes with Rupert's
Google-blocking and pay-walling - which is understandable, because it
doesn't.

Go Mavs!

markcuban

actually, if i sign up to follow a fox brand, like fox news on twitter, its far more likely that I will sign up and pay for fox news content. Same holds for most branded content. As a result, more traffic from twitter is going to be converted into paying customers than traffic from Google News and others.

does that not work for you ?

Not all visitors to a website add value. In fact an argument can be made that "being part of the club" and "having access others dont have " creates more value to subscribers.

This is a no brainer for Newscorp. doing it the crusty, tired way its been done for the last 10 years on the net, is the one recipe they know doesnt work.

mathewi

Fair enough, Mark -- although I think that the theoretical Fox News audience is more fungible than either you or Ian (or Rupert) want to admit. In any case, what you have described is a recipe for maintaining a certain audience, not increasing it.

ianbetteridge

Well I'd actually agree with you in part - as I noted above, Murdoch's challenge is to create (or exploit) whatever the "niche" audience is for Fox, or BSkyB, or The Sun, or whatever. The question is whether there really are people out there who think of themselves as "Fox news sort of people" - is there brand loyalty, or can he build it?

AGORACOM - George

Mark, this may be a simple point but here it goes. Why not continue to bring traffic in from Google but create a specific message for them when they arrive in an attempt to get them to subscribe to a Fox brand?

For example: "Thanks for visiting Foxnews.com via Google news. Here are the top 5 reasons our audience trusts and returns to Fox daily. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. If any of these appeal to you, stay dialed into Fox by RSS, Twitter, etc."

Tell me why this isn't a better approach to the Google issue than simply shutting it off.

Thanks,
George

K. Warman Kern

@agoracom as I mention below in my comment:

I did my own little test and learned the key to Twitter superiority in generating links is timing. Twitter and Facebook links happen in real time. By the time Google search system finds your link OR (as in my test) Google processes your AdWord buy the news value and therefore demand for the info is just "so yesterday."

By the way no one is mentioning feeds or email newsletters. I link to a lot of information through feeds or newsletters with headlines and summaries that come in via email

AGORACOM - George

Good info to have but I'm not as concerned about Twitter / Google superiority as I am about getting the most out of each source. In this case, why not simply target potential new people coming in from Google and give them a reason to convert?

This seems to address Cuban's valid point that traffic comes in via Google but leaves just as fast, so it isn't all that valuable. I figure a "lead" is a lead, so why not bring them in and give them a reason to stay.

Am I missing something? Mathew?

George

mathewi

Strikes me as a great approach, George -- the same way many blogs have
"landing page" boxes that promote their RSS feed, related posts, etc.

markcuban

i have no problem with the landing page option, but it ignores a bigger opportunity, all be it a long shot bet, disrupting google.

There are 2 sides of removing themselves from the index:
1. it works. If it works and FoxNews and other newscorp entities become better businesses, or even if they dont lose anything, it could prompt other big name content sources to do the same. If enough content sources opt out of Google, there is that long shot chance that Google could be negatively impacted. Which is a huge win for many big companies.

2. If it doesnt work after some period of time, they do the obvious. They take out their robots.txt file and life goes back to the way it was. One certainty is that no one is going to avoid newscorp sites because they had previously opted out of google indexes.

SO the upside has enormous consequences. The downside next to none

m

mathewi

I don't see how it's a net benefit to News Corp. -- or any other major media
outlet, for that matter -- if they all pull out of Google and no one
benefits directly, but Google is somehow negatively impacted. The only
companies I can think of that benefit in that scenario are Microsoft and
Yahoo, but why should Murdoch or anyone else celebrate that? All they care
about (or should care about) is that people can find their content. So my
two things would be:

1. News Corp. pulls out of the index and nothing happens, in which case why
did they bother?

2. they pull out of the index and they lose all kinds of traffic and
mind-share and attention and promotional value through link-sharing, blogs,
etc. -- but they don't notice until it's too late, and by that point
re-entering the index doesn't help.

That sounds like a sucker bet to me.

markcuban

If you think all they should care is that people find their content, you dont understand their business at all.

mathewi

I didn't say that's all they should care about, Mark -- I said that when it
comes to search, all they should care about is that readers can find their
content, not whether Google or Microsoft or Yahoo is on top.

markcuban

Rupert recognizes that Google is a threat. They have the reach and cash to get into any element of the entertainment or news business that they choose. Anything that reduces their dominance and their profitability , and therefore their ability to compete in areas that are core to newscorp is a win for Newscorp .

THey would much prefer that bing, ask, yahoo, google all have equal market share. That would help shift strength from distribution to content.

So they should care where it comes from.

mathewi

Yes, I can see how Rupert would see things that way -- and so he is willing
to potentially endanger the long-term online growth (if not survival) of
some of his key media properties because he wants to take down Google so
they don't someday decide to compete with him. Classic.

markcuban

Yeah, so lets say he loses 25pct of his traffic. He goes from say 20mm uniques to 15mm. His revenue doesnt change a nickel. He isnt selling all that inventory anyway.

His business is really in trouble when his revenue doesnt fall and he has 15mm uniques instead of 20mm.

Of course, he has absolutely no promotional power whatsoever with Fox, Fox News, Fox Sports, broadcasting the NFL, the WSJ, etc. No ability to reach those people who chose to go through google. No way of getting them to go to his sites. Poor guy.

Im curious. which properties do you think are at risk for rupert ?

mathewi

Obviously he still has promotional power -- all kinds of it. So I'll be interested to see what happens to his business when he removes Google and virtually all of social media from that equation. Should be a fascinating test case.

AGORACOM - George

Actually Mathew, I don't think it's a suckers best - but it is a long shot. Nonetheless, a long shot that is worth taking in the eyes of the media Titans who rightfully feel threatened by the possibility that Google will become the 21st Century news traffic cop.

As a businessman, I'd be concerned also because the big unknown is what will Google do with that power 5 years from now? They are playing nice now but once they hit Max Q, what is their next move?

This is a substantially bigger battle than we can all see right now. Have Murdoch and others unsuccessfully sat down with Google to find compromise, forcing this next step? I know it's what I would have done in Murdoch's shoes - but I also know for a fact that Google flexes its muscles in unreasonable ways.

Regards,
George

K. Warman Kern

Murdoch's threat to pull out of the Google index isn't a sucker bet and here's why.

Google is paying Murdoch for a MySpace feed. Bing just agreed to pay Twitter for a Twitter feed. Hundreds of Millions of dollars for a pile of personal social blah blah blah.

Google pays nothing to Murdoch and his fellow programmers/publishers for a feed of the product of the professional paid journalists and other content creators.

Maybe you should be directing your questions to Google instead of Murdoch.

Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity

AGORACOM - George

Ah and there's the rub. I didn't want to say it at first b/c I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Now that you've broken the possibility (more credible from you than me), I now have confirmation of the answer to "am I missing something"?

Specifically, the answer is that Rupert represents the test balloon for big media whom are increasingly becoming concerned that Google News will become the 4-way stop sign of news consumption. It is not difficult to conceive Rupert and the Titans sitting around a table having drinks and discussing how to derail the Google news train. I wouldn't blame them. They couldn't all make the move together, so Rupert stepped up and put himself in the line of fire first

Quite frankly, I would have accepted that argument from Murdoch much better than his weak facade argument - even though we all know he could not actually do so.

This way, as Mark says, he retains the right to revert back to the status quo with very little lost but some excess, non-revenue generating traffic - while having taken a shot at breaking the Google News grip.

It's settled then. No use in debating "pay wall" vs. "free". The Murdoch move has nothing to do with it. This is an all out turf war and that is a different argument all together.

Regards,
George (aka "Everything comes down to the $$ baby")

K. Warman Kern

All "leads" are not the same. Conversion rates differ for one lead vs. another and for one product vs. another, for many reasons. For example, timing: is the lead coming in the day the article was written or 5 years later. Or, confirmation bias: when confronted with abundant choice, most people will opt for the choice that reinforces their personal point of view, so, you can increase conversion rates by targeting people with a compatible bias.

The Google search index is like throwing it up there an hoping it sticks. When a Google lead comes in the odds of converting are low because garbage in, garbage out.

There are better strategies. I've seen as high as a 30% conversion of a small well-defined universe.

K. Warman Kern

@Mathewi, thanks for this summary of the continuing Murdoch story. My test of twitter v Google confirms twitter is better linker. Also, have you considered that journalists may benefit from Murdoch's mission?

I agree with both you and Cuban about the value of social media linking vs. Google to drive traffic. I did my own little test and learned the key is timing. Twitter and Facebook links happen in real time. By the time Google search system finds your link OR (as in my test) Google processes your AdWord buy the news value and therefore demand for the info is just "so yesterday."

As far as what happens when the link hits the paywall . . . Of course, if Murdoch et al does nothing different and just raises the wall, results will be disappointing. But not because people won't pay.

Consumers spend huge amounts on media. Most of that is for access (a commodity) and, to reap the benefits, consumers know they still have to invest time and attention to find the experience they want. There is a lot of room for improvement: namely, instant gratification for the experience they want.

As long as publishing and programming brands could rely on ad $ to make their numbers, all they had to do was maintain the level of eyeballs. Now they are addressing the challenge of what it will take to get a share of those consumer dollars. Now that they are looking for the consumer to pay, a journalist or other content creator with a loyal core fanbase, especially if they demonstrate a willingness to pay, becomes very valuable.

So if I were a journalist I would be:
a) thrilled that the shoe has finally dropped and the big guys are now figuring out what it will take to win a share of consumer dollars and
b) especially if you are already working both on your craft and building a core fanbase, because this combination will have huge value to a programming or publishing brand focused on consumer purchases.

It may be possible that this recent economic crisis is like a shift in the tide that could work in your favor.

Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity

Danny Sullivan

"So there is no loss of revenue by leaving Google as a free site."

So why does the WSJ work so hard to generate traffic not just from Google but from social sites like Digg? They do outreach. They were NOT in Google a few years ago, then they specifically got into it.

If they have all the traffic they need right now, why do they bother with this? I think the answer is that they actually do want more traffic. They do want attention -- and yes, even attention from that random user.

Also, go search for "financial news." Look at that WSJ ad:

"Financial News
Financial and Business News from
The Wall Street Journal Online"

What's that all about, then? He's paying hard cash to attract people for some terms but is unable to convert the millions more he gets for free -- who read a sample of what the WSJ is pitching?

"This is a no brainer for Newscorp. doing it the crusty, tired way its been done for the last 10 years on the net, is the one recipe they know doesnt work."

Doesn't work how. Hasn't the old crusty well of selling the paper in print been losing money recently? Haven't newspapers been losing circulation and revenue longer than we've had the web?

Hey, why doesn't Murdoch take the WSJ subscription price up to $1,000 per year. Sure, he'll have fewer readers, but they'll be that more exclusive club you talk about below. And maybe that would be a good strategy. But the point is, write off online when it has hardly been really tested. And expect online is supposed to be what, generating all your income? And it all has to come from ads?

C'mon, Mark. If I gave you the WSJ and millions of visits, would you turn that off? Wouldn't you be smart enough to find a way to make money off of it & still have your subscription product?

"SO the upside has enormous consequences. The downside next to none"

Again, from further below. Oh, if the WSJ isn't in Google, life will go on for it. It's big enough to make that gamble. But Fox News might not be. And lots of smaller publications can't. And over time, if the WSJ isn't in front of a bigger audience, it may ultimately have a smaller voice. Might still be a fine business, but might also be a lost opportunity.

markcuban

First, remember, Rupert just bought the WSJ recently. I dont think he can scrub it, nor should he try, of all the bad habits. Its not worth the effort.

And to your point. He has raised prices. He is starting to charge places they have never charged before. And guess what, the WSJ is now the #1 daily in the country.

Newspapers are raising prices of print left and right. They finally realized that the people who want their print product, really, really want it and will pay for it.

The WSJ is a bad example because there are too many investors/traders who cant afford not to get it at any price. The WSJ moves markets.

The NY Post will be the most interesting test case. Its a product that is not a must have. It has suffered because they have raised newstand prices. They are in an incredibly competitive market. Its VERY difficult for them to differentiate with anything except maybe gossip. But, there is a difference between reach and revenues and profits. Its very possible if not likely, that by charging for content online and increasing the newstand and subscription prices, they make far more money from the Post.
But I dont think that is the right move for them either. All the commentators here seem to look at each Newscorp asset as a standalone business. Its not. Newscorp has an incredible amount of digital assets. The marginal cost of delivery of which approaches zero. They have the ability to create content bundles that are of significant value to consumers, without the consumer thinking they are paying for the newscontent. I doubt Newsday /Cablevision subscribers know or care what the rules are for them to get Newsday online. THey get it. Just so happens non Cablevision subscribers have to pay.

THe prevailing wisdom seems to be if you build it and they come, why not let them in the door ? The answer is because they get there, but dont really know or care where they are at. They went to google and got what they were looking for from some site google sent them to. I know the numbers i have seen from news sites show that retention of uniques earned through google searches is not high. They are visitors. They leave. THere is no relationship developed.

IMHO, just as people ignore the banner ads on pages, they ignore the name of the company presenting the content. One is just above the other.

you are the search expert, but my business sense tells me that its better to focus on the people who are there to dance with me. Block google. See what the information tells me. See what happens. I dont think you lose anything, and you might just hit a home run

mathewi

So newspapers fail to convert readers who come in through search. Is
that Google's fault, or the Internet's fault, or is it the fault of
the newspaper for not knowing (or caring) how to engage and convert
and retain readers? Better to focus on charging an ever-shrinking
number of devoted readers ever-increasing sums for the same old
content. Great strategy.

markcuban

Actually, for all either one of us knows, that could be the exact right strategy to identifying exactly what your customers want and how to make them happy. Using that information to find more like minded prospects and turn them into customers.

Makes a whole lot more sense than letting everyong in the door and praying they will stay around and then praying that you can sell advertising for their stay, and then praying its at a price that helps you pay your bills.

One key tenant of business is know your customer as best you can. A 2nd key tenant is that you cant make everyone happy. Take the ones who llike what you do and provide them great service and value.

shanthalabalagopal

But the adverting revenue model is not sustainable. Ad revenues have dropped significantly over the past year. It is definitely not a guaranteed source of revenue for any company. One of the main source of income for Newspaper companies are the ads they run in their newspaper. But the physical newspaper market is shrinking. Yes, maybe newspapers can try to do the same thing with their online market, but in this world of channel surfing, web page skipping, tivo recording, ads are not going to convert like they used to before. So how would a company benefit by giving away content for free via Google? What/who is going to pay the people who us bringing the news - reporters, editors. etc? Unless physical newspapers make a come back like the vinyl, charging for content will be inevitable.

If the content is unique and if recommended from a good friend on a social network, why won't a user pay? We will in the future tell a story about how once upon a time all this content was free. Remember our grandparents used to say that? :)

John K. McCaw

Interesting discussion Matthew. Thank you for hosting.

This is what I think is missing from the conversation:

RT @gfulgoni: I share the concern RT @jblossom: Publishers Wonder If Marketers Have Lost Touch With Branding http://bit.ly/1kMiJa

Ironically, the message above came from John Battelle's Twitter account. It's ironic to me because John Battelle's personal brand will forever be linked to Google and it is Google that is largely responsible for destroying brands. Simply put, Google has paved the way for all marketing to turn into Direct Marketing and it is killing publishers of all types.

For brands, its death by a thousand Google searches.

By design or by luck Google has positioned itself such that it grows stronger as other media properties grow weaker. Its far better for Google if consumers get their news from 1000 different sources than if they get their news from 1 source. That goes for businesses of all types, the more the Internet plays a central role in any industry, the more the brands in said industry find themselves under Google's control.

People need a reminder that Google is a big business. This is not kindergarten and Google is not interested in sharing. To grow Google needs more advertising revenues. The advertising pie is only so big, and advertising money that goes directly to Fox News or WSJ is advertising revenue that isn't going through the Google ecosystem. Its really that simple.

Murdoch is trying to rescue his brands. Brands that are otherwise going to die a slow death, death by 1000 google searches. Is it as simple as blocking Google's crawler? No. Are there viable strategies that can be employed where NewsCorp's Internet properties can maintain traffic levels, while declaring their independance from Google? I think so.

Back to brands for a second. There was a time when Media and Commerce worked hand in hand. Consumers understood that the advertiser supported the content they were watching, there was an indistinguishable connection. In that world, the media entities brand mattered, and the media entities brand was used to build another brand. That association doesn't exist in today's Internet and IMO that is unhealthy for every business not names Google.