Commentary
The Sorry State Of Online Publishing
- by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, December 17, 2014
Dynamic tension can be a good thing. There are plenty of examples of when this is so, but online publishing isn’t one of them. Publishing's plunging transaction costs and its increasingly desperate attempts to shore up some sort of sustainable revenue model are creating a tug-of-war that’s threatening to tear apart the one person this whole sorry mess is revolving around: the reader. Somebody had better get their act together soon, because I’m one reader that’s getting sick of it.
Trying to read an article on most sites online is like trying to tiptoe through a cognitive minefield. Publishers have squeezed every possible advertising opportunity onto the page -- and in doing so, have sacrificed credibility, cohesiveness and clarity. The job of publishing is communication, but these publishers seem to think the job is actually sacrificing communication for revenue. Methinks if you have to attack your own business model to make a profit, you should be taking a long, hard look at said model.
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Either Fish or Cut Click Bait
The problem has grown so pervasive that academia is even piling on. In the past few months, a number of studies have looked at the dismal state of online publishing.
In the quest for page views, publishers have mastered the trick of pushing our subconscious BSO (Bright Shiny Object) buttons with clickbait. Clickbait is essentially brain porn -- headlines, often misleading -- that you can’t resist clicking on. The theory is more page views equal more advertising opportunities. The problem is that clickbait essential derails the mind from its predetermined focus. And worse, clickbait often distracts the brain with a misleading headline the subsequent article fails to deliver on. As Jon Stewart recently told New York magazine, “It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, 'Come on in here and see a three-legged man!' So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch.”
A recent study from The Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that misleading headlines and something called “false balance” -- where publishers give equal airtime to sources with very different levels of credibility -- can negatively affect the reader’s ability to remember the story and cognitively process the information. In other words, publishers' desperate desire to grab eyeballs gets in the way of their ability to communicate effectively.
Buzzfeed Editor in Chief Ben Smith has publicly gone on the record about why he
doesn’t use click-bait headlines: “Here is a trade secret I’d decided a few years ago we’d be better off not revealing — clickbait stopped working around 2009.” He
references Facebook engineer Khalid El-Arini in the post, saying “readers don’t want to be
tricked by headlines; instead, they want to be informed by them.”
Now You Read Me, Now You Don’t
If you ever wanted to test your resolve, try getting to the end of an online article. What content there is is shoehorned into a format littered with ads and clickbait of every description. Many publishers even try to squeeze revenue from the content itself by using Text Enhance, an ad-serving platform that hyperlinks keywords in the copy and shows ads if your cursor strays anywhere near these links. I often use my cursor both as a place marker and a quick way to vet sources of embedded links. Text Enhance makes reading in this way an incredibly frustrating experience, as it continually pops up poorly targeted ads while I try to tiptoe through the advertising landmines to piece together what the writer was originally trying to say. It turns reading content into a virtual game of “Whack-a-Mole.”
Of course, this is assuming you’ve made it past the page takeover and auto-play video ads that litter the “mind-field” between you and the content you want to access on a site like Forbes or The Atlantic. These interruptions in our intent create a negative mental framework compounded by having to weave through increasingly garish ad formats in order to piece together the content you're trying to access.
A new study from Microsoft and Northwestern University shows that aggressive and annoying advertising may prop up short-term revenues, but at a long-term price that publishers should be thinking twice about paying. According to the study, “The practice of running annoying ads can cost more money than it earns, as people are more likely to abandon sites on which they are present. In addition, in the presence of annoying ads, people were less accurate in remembering what they had read. None of these effects on users is desirable from the publisher’s perspective.”
Again, we have this recurring theme about revenue getting in the way of user experience. This is a conflict from which there can be no long-term benefit. When you frustrate users, you slowly kill your revenue source. You engage in a vicious cycle from which there is no escape.
I understand that online publishers are desperate. I get that. They should be. I suspect the ad-supported business platform they’re trying to prop up is hopelessly damaged. Another will emerge to take its place. But the more they frustrate us, the faster that will happen.
Users have demonstrated they'll put up with a lot in order to get free information/entertainment. Not certain if you are a football fan, but the games are now virtually unwatchable compared to 25 years ago. Yet the NFL seems to suffer no financial damage.
That said, I hope you'll do a follow up with suggestions for those of us in the publishing business. I'm certain there are many reading this who'd like the answer that collectively has eluded us since the fat-dumb-happy days of selling print advertising.
BTW, I wasn't offended by the video ad that popped up in the middle of your piece. The Fadners deserve to make a living too.
Absolutely! And how? By leveraging technology solutions that drive more page views by giving the audience more value, not more ads. There are several technology providers that can bring revenue by leveraging publishers' 1st-party audience data to make the content more relevant and more engaging. Some identify and predict content that will achieve higher engagement. Some providers leverage social media by providing sharing tools and as a result increase reach and scale. Other solutions (SSP's and exchanges) optimize revenue through indirect sales channels. The publishers who create unique content or a unique value proposition for consumers (Facebook) will continue to maintain and grow their audiences and their revenue. Those who don't will continue to struggle to grow revenue and will eventually perish.
Great overview of the problem facing publishers today. Significant declines in print circulation, sales, and advertising are forcing them to transition online, only to find that their CPM rates are a fraction of what they're used to enjoying.
It's been 15 years since the disruptive force of the Internet began to spell the end of print publishing yet the traditional companies are still trying to hold on to their old models for dear life. Changing old ways is hard to do.
What's needed for publishers to be successful in this new world is to grow beyond simply being content producers. They need to become full-fledged marketing organizations that can leverage their valuable content, target this to the appropriate market segments, build communities using their content as the foundation, and then offer services, products, and programs that their communities want. Easier said than done... but changing times require changing business models.
One of the best examples of a company that has leveraged its content to power marketing programs (conferences, fashion shows, campus rep programs, college survival kits, marketing surveys, etc.) geared to its community is Her Campus Media (www.hercampus.com), an online magazine for high schoolers, college girls, and twenty-somethings that has "chapters" on 250 campuses. Traditional print publishers could learn a lot by spending a day or two looking at this new business model.
Traditional print publishers that think they can simply publish their content online and survive have seen the writing on the wall. The winners in this new publishing world will be those that are smart enough to understand what target audiences they reach and can then build out a marketing organization and the appropriate offerings to leverage these market segments to the fullest.
Gord, a very nice piece that echoes some of my own frustration (see http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/235861/why-digital-advertising-is-anything-but-creative.html). I do not believe there is a single solution to the problem, rather, I see this as an evolutionary process that will result in the extinction of some business model and the birth of others. As you point out, in the short term we readers are the one who suffer.
Gord, I concur for the average reader this is getting to a point you want to just turn back to the hard copy. At least you had a choice to put the trash where it belonged....in the trash. I fear the same will happen to Digital Television as we move forward into the next few years with programmatic insertions and the convergence of Smart TV's ...I feel watching a Football Game will be like tunneling through a maze of popups and whatever all for the almighty dollar.
This is an incisive analysis of the problems, Gord. MediaPost tries to be on the right side of this issue for our readers.
I think the problem in publishing is a Schumpeterian Gale of Creative Destruction. Ken..and other publishers...I feel your pain. I suspect the reality of publishing will be very different in the next decade. The paradigm of ad supported media is not sustainable any more, and the answers will be found on the frontiers, not in the middle where old models are trying to hold on. We know that shouting louder and more often doesn't seem to be working.
Gordon is 1000% correct. Shame on "all of us" in this business for allowing this to happen. Gordon I will email you a screen shot that captures everything you shared in a nut shell.
I agree that publishing sites can't keep making their content so difficult to read. Death by distraction.
But I'm intrigued by your observation that "The paradigm of ad supported media is not sustainable any more, and the answers will be found on the frontiers, not in the middle where old models are trying to hold on. We know that shouting louder and more often doesn't seem to be working."
I hope you'll tell us more soon about what you're thinking.
Subscriber-supported publishing? Pay-per-story (Blendl)? Where ARE the frontiers of online publishing?
I'm not looking for the Next Big Thing, but I'm seeking hope as the old models crumble.
What DO we do next to rebuild the relationship between readers and writers if we believe in the idea of "publishing" and the (reasonable) objective of a revenue-producing exchange?
I'm certain there are many reading this who'd like the answer that collectively has eluded us since the fat-dumb-happy days of selling print advertising. BTW, I wasn't offended by the video ad that popped up in the middle of your piece. I suspect the reality of publishing will be very different in the next decade. The paradigm of ad supported media is not sustainable any more, and the answers will be found on the frontiers, not in the middle where old models are trying to hold on.