Why the future of news is making IP headlines

In a clash that echoes the strug­gle between the music indus­try and online stream­ing ser­vices, pub­lish­ers now want greater lev­els of remu­ner­a­tion for their jour­nal­ism from web­sites, aggre­ga­tors and apps dis­play­ing their sto­ries or link­ing to them.

Jour­nal­ism has tra­di­tion­al­ly been financed through adver­tis­ing, but this has been erod­ed by Face­book and Google’s dom­i­nance in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing. Pub­lish­ers argue that because their own con­tent, as head­lines, snip­pets or pic­tures, is served up to social media and search users, they deserve a fair­er share of these rev­enues.

The sit­u­a­tion is now so tricky that gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion is being con­sid­ered. In Aus­tralia, the News Media Bar­gain­ing Code was draft­ed and intro­duced in par­lia­ment with Google Aus­tralia and New Zealand vice pres­i­dent Melanie Sil­va con­cerned it would “sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the Google ser­vices Aus­tralians use every day”.

Writ­ing on Google’s blog, she says: “An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty have con­cerns about key aspects of the code or are down­right opposed to it. Even a num­ber of news pub­lish­ers have voiced con­cerns about key aspects of the draft law, such as the arbi­tra­tion process and min­i­mum stan­dards pro­vi­sions, and its impact on media diver­si­ty.”

In France, Google is pay­ing some media out­lets for con­tent appear­ing in search­es, while late last year it announced a $1‑billion glob­al invest­ment in part­ner­ships with news pub­lish­ers to include its forth­com­ing Google News Show­case.

Accord­ing to Google and Alpha­bet chief exec­u­tive Sun­dar Pichai: “This finan­cial com­mit­ment, our biggest to date, will pay pub­lish­ers to cre­ate and curate high-qual­i­ty con­tent for a dif­fer­ent kind of online news expe­ri­ence.”

Face­book too has agreed to pay UK pub­lish­ers for “con­tent that is not already on the plat­form” amid the launch of Face­book News. Media names includ­ing Hearst, Condé Nast and Reach had all signed up, Face­book says.

UK is also looking at media IP intervention

To tack­le the grow­ing issue, the UK gov­ern­ment announced in Novem­ber 2020 that a new Dig­i­tal Mar­kets Unit, cre­at­ed through the Depart­ment for Dig­i­tal, Cul­ture, Media and Sport and the Depart­ment for Busi­ness, is to launch.

Its job will be to intro­duce and enforce a new code that, among oth­er things, will “sup­port the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the news pub­lish­ing indus­try, help­ing to rebal­ance the rela­tion­ship between pub­lish­ers and online plat­forms”.

Korieh Duo­du, senior part­ner of Egal­i­ty Law, a UK firm spe­cial­is­ing in media and IP law, says: “It is encour­ag­ing to see the UK Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Author­i­ty ded­i­cate a team to address­ing Face­book and Google’s mar­ket dom­i­nance.

“While the details of the team’s new code are yet to be pub­lished, we under­stand it will help pub­lish­ers mon­e­tise their con­tent. Cer­tain larg­er pub­lish­ers are already in talks with Face­book over licens­ing deals.

“Effec­tive reg­u­la­tion in this area should come as wel­come news for pub­lish­ers and, in turn, facil­i­tate the pro­tec­tion of qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism in this coun­try.”

Duo­du says it is impor­tant the code gives “due regard” to free­lance and employed jour­nal­ists who orig­i­nate such mate­r­i­al, adding: “Free­lancers in par­tic­u­lar have borne the brunt of a failed regime that does­n’t pay them onward roy­al­ties for their syn­di­cat­ed con­tent.”

How­ev­er, mar­ket­ing and PR spe­cial­ist Stephen Wadding­ton, of Wadds Inc., sees state inter­ven­tion to redress the bal­ance as “a stick­ing plas­ter”. “Face­book and Google account for more than 60 per cent of dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing spend­ing world­wide. No oth­er plat­form can offer the audi­ence scale or gran­u­lar­i­ty of tar­get­ing,” he says.

“A break-up of big tech is crit­i­cal to allow the media and tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket the breath­ing space to inno­vate.”

Value of news media IP is changing fast

Such inno­va­tion will be crit­i­cal to mon­etis­ing the IP of news pub­lish­ing. One way of pro­tect­ing it has been the idea of a “Spo­ti­fy” for edi­to­r­i­al con­tent with a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice to a range of pub­lish­ers or intro­duc­ing a micro-trans­ac­tions sys­tem so IP can be paid for on an arti­cle-by-arti­cle basis.

But while Oliv­er Feld­wick, head of inno­va­tion at The&Partnership, one of the world’s fastest grow­ing mar­ket­ing net­works, believes such ideas are pos­si­ble on paper, he argues peo­ple’s appetite for pay­ing for news has been erod­ed by years of free con­tent.

Along­side this, anoth­er key chal­lenge has been the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Accord­ing to Andy Barr, chief exec­u­tive of 10 Yetis Dig­i­tal, it has forced many pub­lish­ers into greater use of affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing plat­forms because tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing rev­enues and print cir­cu­la­tions have dropped.

Feld­wick though believes we are set to see an even greater shift in atti­tudes when it comes to the val­ue of news IP. “Chas­ing eye­balls led to a boom in click­bait, in out­rage, in fake news; what­ev­er gets clicked gets paid,” he says.

“How­ev­er, now the dust has set­tled, there is a shift to focus on true, valu­able and qual­i­ty atten­tion. This means qual­i­ty con­tent and IP is more impor­tant than ever. Atten­tion stud­ies show peo­ple read ads bet­ter on qual­i­ty pub­lish­er sites.”

High­light­ing how a mix of pay­ment mod­els, part adver­tis­ing, part sub­scrip­tion, part bun­dle, was the like­li­est way for­ward, he adds: “The free con­tent pub­lish­ers have strug­gled, while qual­i­ty pub­lish­ers who have defend­ed their IP, while piv­ot­ing to dig­i­tal, are see­ing a thriv­ing light at the end of the tun­nel.”

One fur­ther answer to the news IP chal­lenge, says Peo Pers­son, co-founder of DanAds, is greater trans­paren­cy, with pub­lish­ers mov­ing away from inter­me­di­aries eat­ing up much of the ad spend to direct book­ing.

“News pub­lish­ers have long been under finan­cial pres­sure, but we are start­ing to see clear and pos­i­tive signs jour­nal­ists and pub­lish­ers can be reward­ed for qual­i­ty con­tent by har­ness­ing tech­nol­o­gy to their advan­tage,” Pers­son con­cludes.