Amid reports that media organizations are tightening their digital paywalls to try and make up for falling advertising revenue, CNN boss Jeff Zucker is calling on Google and Facebook – traditional media’s two biggest competitors for advertising dollars – to help devise a solution to help news organizations monetize content posted on their platforms, according to Variety.
…And with so much attention being paid to media mega-mergers (for example, the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner), regulators should also – in Zucker’s opinion – pay closer attention to the power of Google and Facebook. Zucker made these remarks at an industry conference in Spain.
“In a Google and Facebook world, monetization of digital and mobile continues to be more difficult than we would have expected or liked,” Zucker said, Monday, in a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “I think we need help from the advertising world and from the technology world to find new ways to monetize digital content, otherwise good journalism will go away.”
Zucker referred to Facebook and Google as “monopolies” and that their dominance of advertising markets is “the biggest issue” facing the media industry.
“Everyone is looking at whether these combinations of AT&T and Time Warner or Fox and Disney pass government approval and muster, the fact is nobody for some reason is looking at these monopolies that are Google and Facebook,” Zucker said. “That’s where the government should be looking, and helping to make sure everyone else survives. I think that’s probably the biggest issue facing the growth of journalism in the years ahead.”
Asked what he would call the upcoming TV adaptation of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”, Zucker responded that he’d call it “Crazy Town,” adding that he’d start the
He added that he’d open the series on election night, showing President Trump and senior players in his campaign grappling with the fact that they were going to defeat Hillary Clinton – an outcome that none of them had anticipated, according to Wolff.
Of course, Zucker – who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over his network’s adversarial coverage of the White House – said nothing about news networks and their obligation to ensure their coverage is free of partisan bias.
Research firm eMarketer recently estimated that Google and Facebook will account for more than 65% of US digital advertising revenues in 2018, according to the Hill.
.@Google and @Facebook combined will account for more than 65% of US digital #ad revenues in 2018, @eMarketer estimates: https://t.co/LSg7oEoFmO pic.twitter.com/2CtHpBpZsC
— eMarketer (@eMarketer) February 23, 2018
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2F4Almt Tyler Durden