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Newspaper Ad Network Shuns Google, Yahoo, MS
Ian Lamont writes "The New York Times, and the Tribune, Gannett, and Hearst companies have launched their own ad network, called QuadrantOne. It will let advertisers place ads on media sites in 27 major markets, and let them target readers by content type, demographic information, and online behavior. Notably absent from the deal: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Both Google and Yahoo have their own ad networks focused on newspapers, but, as the article says, 'if newspapers develop better ways to sell their own online ads, they may not have to share revenue with their Web counterparts such as Yahoo and Google.'"
That makes sense.
A big problem with Google's "content network" is that most of the ad sites have no real content. The newspaper industry at least has something worth attaching ads to. Google is taking a 50% cut of ad revenue without doing very much for it.
This may push Google ads towards the "bottom feeder" made-for-Adwords sites, especially if the news media become very aggressive about going after anyone copying their content. This will make thosse ads much less valuable; that's where the low-value clicks come from.
I gleefully welcome the destruction of the mainstream media. Why? Despite touting itself as a watchdog, the media is quite possibly the single biggest enemy that "democracy" and liberty have in the United States. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that whatever can be said of Bush and Cheney, the mainstream media beats them by a wide margin. It doesn't criticize the government except a few politicians, it almost never holds corrupt and abusive government employees accountable, and it rarely provides a voice for actually holding the government by the short hairs and making it fess up.
There is a case that, for me, was the last straw. It was written in the Pilot, which is a major Virginia media outlet. I have a write up here showing how much of a f$%^ing lapdog the media was in not questioning how the police carried out this raid. The reports have only gotten worse, including it appears to be that the police conducted this raid after knowing that their own informant committed a felony against the poor guy by breaking into his home 3 days before the raid (might explain why he was trigger happy when the police raided the house 3 days later at night while he was in bed).
The media has two modes when it comes to their traditional role of watchdog: lapdog and psychotic attack dog that turns on the children. They'll either damn near cover stuff up, or make a mountain out of a molehill, when there are plenty of good examples that would get the public furious for good reasons.
What is this? Some bullshit concept of "journalist ethics and social responsibility" at work? I don't buy the corporate angle that much because if they reported half of the shit that makes it to civil libertarian blogs and kept up with it, they'd have more naturally occurring controversy to sell ads with than the law should allow.
So, I say bring it on to the mainstream media. There are plenty of lightweight media outlets that aren't barely more than Associated Press resellers, and they're going up against Craigslist, a 800lb gorilla in the classifieds market now.