The row about Ad-Blocking rumbles on but is anything being achieved and isn't it simpler than all of this?
Some of the UK's and US largest publishers have sent a 'cease and desist' legal threat to 'Brave', a new browser with Ad blocking backed in, run by the former CEO of 'Mozilla'. The publishers include The NY Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal et al - 17 of them at least. Presumably too, they've a lot of letters to send to a lot of Ad blockers.
They seem to favour a long legal battle about 'copyright' than using their heads.
'Brave' blocks all Ads except...their own. Clever boys, although the premise is that publishers also get a share (estimated 55%). Publishers claim it's a breach of copyright and will seek damages. Fair enough, that's going to take a legal while....
(As an aside, Denis O'Brien's mobile Digicel is blocking Ads since September, for a different reason because as a 'platform' that carries traffic to the publishers, they too want a share of the Ad money.)
The difficult bit of course, is that online publishers rely on advertising to pay for (and profit from) their sites. Ad blocking diminishes that revenue and Ad blocking is on a surge in an overcrowded market. But you have some sympathy for publishers who are running a business too.
However, it's often forgotten that it's the users who want to Ad block, a point that seems to be missed.
And why? Because of the Ads, not because of the content.
They do not want to be extensively tracked (and they are with the 'consent' of the publisher) and they want a faster browsing experience (which heavy 'rich' advertising negates).
'Brave' sells itself as 'Browse safer and faster'. That's what users want and that's why users are using Ad blocking like 'Brave'.
More than 200 million people use Ad blocking software for these reasons and as a consequent, browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari are all allowing users to do so. Adblock Plus, the most used blocker, takes payment from companies to bypass their Ad blocking software, often referred to by critics as 'extortion'.
So Ad blocking is something the user wants and we know, the user also wants content. After all, that's why they're online.
Is the solution therefore, not simpler?
If the publisher simply refuses any content to users with Ad blockers (no access to any news for example) that will fix it. And if the publishers come together (which 17 titles seem very keen to do legally), this can be done overnight.
ITV and Channel 4 are good examples of the start of this journey.
You want access to the site? Switch off your Ad blocker or you get none.
It's really that simple because on balance, users want the content more than they'll suffer the Ads. Exactly as they do in traditional media.
You want to stop Ad blocking then just stop giving the content. Today.
(Jack Kennedy gets to meet Rupert Murdoch).
The split last week, of what is affectionately known as "the Murdoch empire" when in fact, Rupert Murdoch is a large but 40% minority shareholder, a business he inherited from his father, has really got attention. Sure, because of the recent phone hacking controversy but also because there's a sense that a sleeping giant has awoken. And when they do, run.
Last week he split News Corp into two - entertainment/media (includes 20th century Fox, Fox news) and print/publishing (includes The Sun, The Times, WSJ, New York post, HarperCollins etc). The entertainment business is valued at circa 50 billion usd alone.
In other words, splitting the businesses along the lines of old media and new but including in it a distinction between a published brand and an online one. In other words, two versions of the same title behaving differently if they're online and if they're offline. It's a simple idea that's just genius.
He knows what every publisher knows - there's life in traditional media but massive potential growth in their online brands. By separating out the two (indeed, exactly as the Irish Times have done here) gives new focus. He also knows that he can get it wrong and owned up to his "massive mistake" in the myspace investment, selling at 94% off his 6bn usd valuation and losing a small fortune.
Separate offices, separate management, separate businesses means that the hacks of old can keep doing their thing, whilst the new turks can find a new way.
It is, the perfect thing for a publisher to do and does not spell a lack of confidence by Murdoch in his traditional business. Just a new focus.
According to Techcrunch he said clearly, "People will pay for news. It is the most valuable commodity in the world" and he pointed out that the charging models for newspapers and apps are working, “And we are going to push them even harder.”
In a similar vein of The Wall Street Journal/Pulse announcement earlier in the week and in contrast to the Flipboard/New York Times debacle the same week, what it all means is that there's new impetus to sort this all out.
The UK Times dropped its online paywall for the Queen’s Jubilee anniversary, the first time it’s done this since charges came into effect in 2010.
Those charges initially caused a 90 percent decline, a drop of 4 million users, but numbers have been steadily increasing since March 2011 and are now at 265,740 subscribers. So Murdoch might be right.
Talking to Charles Blandford of The Financial Times dublin, he reckons that 50% of the overall group revenue comes now from digital. 50%. Mind you, when it comes to live streaming, FT Digital were the first over the fence to become a separate business unit. And the first that we admired as being innovative live streamers.
On the Murdoch split, Sarah Gordon in the FT this Saturday reported, "the business's long-term growth prospects are cloudy...grappling with the challenge to make money in the digital world". And of course she's right. One way to grapple with it though is to do exactly as he's done, run both separately.
I've blogged before about the decline of TV Advertising and the movement of ad dollars online http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/05/new-nielsen-data-finds-trust-in-tv.html
And I've also blogged about BBC Research recently that shows that online publishing is more popular than real world http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/06/online-newspapers-more-popular-now-than.html.
Indeed in a week where most large Irish publishers suffered annual research which showed massive declines in circulation, none of this will come as any surprise. All this is, is further evidence of the switch to digital versions, so let's not panic. And as the Irish publishers continue to wrestle with the problem, they're making great strides in getting there. Trust me.
One way to deal with it is the Murdoch way.
Leave the boys who know what they've been doing for years, alone to get on with it.
But get people who understand the space to look at your web assets and get on with that. Keeping them both apart.
And in doing that, you protect what you have before someone comes along and steals your lunch. And you have traditional media mouthpieces to get it all out there.
It's a threat. Turned into an opportunity.
Murdoch gets it.
