Poor CPM on Google ads devalues everything says WSJ chief. The complete details are given below.
In a conversation about the Future of Journalism with Walter Isaacson of “Time”,Robert Thomson of “Wall Street Journal” and Mort Zuckerman of “The New York Daily News”,here are few of the statements that caught everybody’s attention.
As all the three interviewed gentlemen represent the ‘Old Media‘ today,they sounded biased and emotionally bound to the old media practices.They are well aware of the fact that ‘old media'(mainly newspapers) is steadily losing its readership and more people are relying on information sources on web for staying updated.
They admitted one big advantage of ‘New media’ is the ‘Instantaneous’ nature of web based information sources such as news websites and blogs.With Social media and citizen journalism playing its role quite efficiently,any news that breaks out today doesn’t have to wait for a whole day to get printed on paper and get delivered to one’s doorstep.
But the three ‘old media flagbearers’ were convinced enough about the sustainability of newspapers and magazines.Mr.Thomson remarked…
“Dead trees are definitely not dead. . . the idea of spending 30 minutes with any medium, with — and the only multitasking you’re doing is drinking a cup of coffee, that does make newspapers unique. And actually if you talk to aid people, they’re starting to recognize that.“
Mr Isaacson even said good things about citizen journalists and bloggers.
“We’re getting citizen journalists,bloggers,that are adding immensely to the wealth of information that we have.“
But one bold statement that raised a lot of eyebrows was a quote about Google from WSJ Chief
“Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google but it’s terrible for content providers“
What he meant is that the advertising medium that Google provides(that’s Adsense) for monetizing the visitors of a website is poor in judging the quality of the content written.For instance,an article on WSJ (Wall Street Journal) may take a personal interview of a popular personality but a citizen journalist might simply refer to many information sources available on the web and write down his own take about the event happened.Hence,efforts behind the content produced might be largely different but the monetory output is not proportional enough.
It’s true to an extent that Google, in spite of trying its best to be proportional according to the quality/influence of the website,tends to offer disappointing CPMs,specially for those media folks ,who have been adapted to higher advertising rates.But then one must not ignore the fact that any brands as WSJ and NYTimes are popular and crowded enough to opt for their own advertising system.Google doesn’t force any website/blog owner to put its ads and its always something that any site/blog owner can opt for(provided one has decent influence/readership to ask for self maintained ads.
And when any website offers paid advertisement options to the advertisers then its up to the site owners for deciding CPM rates for various ad slots.Hence,blaming Google for poor CPMs isn’t appreciable but what’s better is to explore better possibilities of monetizing online readership in different ways.
