What Will Commercial Media and Technology Companies Do?
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Many online users and independent media-makers have taken for granted how much big companies have done for them. Independent voices have soared due to innovation in free tools, investment sophisticated platforms and much more. These companies will continue to support many new independent voices if they find profitable business models in doing so. If they pull back, it could ultimately hurt independent media.
The industry could also change if major technology companies successfully move into the content business. John Battelle of Federated Media has argued from the very beginning that Google is good for the news business. One of his primary questions about the future is whether Google will go into the content business full force. “I think that would make a lot of people think very hard about a lot of issues,” he says. Similarly, Nokia, which has a global market share larger than its three closest competitors combined, is transforming itself from a technology to a media company.
Will we see a smaller number of big media companies when industry turmoil settles? How would independent media react? Nicholas Carr thinks, “We’ll likely end up with a handful of mega-journalistic-entities, probably spanning both text and video, and hence fewer choices. This is what happens on the commercial web: Power and money consolidate. But we’ll probably also end up with a supply of good reporting and solid news, and we’ll probably pay for it.”
Big media’s fight for controlling content has heated up. Many companies have started trying to use their bargaining power to regain the value of their content. Advertising Age reported, “Publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly adopting the Automated Content Access Protocol, which intends to tell search engines what they can use and how. It’s focused on copyright, but widespread adoption might give publishers new clout with Google.” For example, ESPN stopped using ad networks in 2008 to have greater control of their audience and ad inventory.
People have their doubts about whether companies will ultimately succeed controlling content distribution. Tim Vanderhook, co-founder of ad network Specific Media said, “If several, or even all, big name publishers stopped working with us (in order to have greater control), it would hurt the publishers themselves more than us…The online advertising business is all about targeting and publishers can’t do it on their own because they don’t have enough data.”
If companies eventually succeed at controlling content, it could be an opportunity for independent media in one of two ways. On one hand, companies that capture greater value from their content may ultimately feed more money into the value chain of media that could spread to other players. On the other hand, pay walls that curb the consumption of content could create an opportunity for independent media to attract many new users who have grown accustomed to free content.
For a full analysis of what commercial media and technology companies will do, download Vol. 3 of The Big Thaw.
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
[...] greatest potential to capture value in journalism may be from “conceptual scoops,” a term John Battelle of Federated Media uses to describe investigative reporting that not only breaks new information, [...]