<story><title>Publishers Haven&apos;t Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is</title><url>https://baekdal.com/strategy/publishers-havent-realized-just-how-big-a-deal-gdpr-is/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>In fact, I think the author is underestimating the impact, right here: &amp;quot;Of course, making this change will have a dramatic impact on your revenue for single-visit traffic, because you basically have to design your ad model to work completely differently from how it works today.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable.  I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through.  Most of the news industry is already sickly, financially, and they mostly have no model other than advertising (with a very few exceptions).  The reason all this data got collected, was to try to make the advertising valuable enough that they could sell it.  It may be that it never really worked, but it sure won&amp;#x27;t work without it.  I think either the EU will backtrack on this once they see that Google and Facebook can easily force people to consent (because people consider those websites too valuable to do without), but most other advertising-supported media cannot; or they will see that the long-term impact of this is that it accelerates the current death spiral of newsmedia, as all ad spending goes to Google and Facebook and almost no one else.&lt;p&gt;I leave it as an open question as to whether this would be a good or bad thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>beojan</author><text>&amp;gt; No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable. I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through. Most of the news industry is already sickly, financially, and they mostly have no model other than advertising (with a very few exceptions).&lt;p&gt;We have publicly funded broadcasters in most EU countries. The ad-supported news sites, on the other hand, are generally doing more harm than good.&lt;p&gt;News outlets existed before the web, so they&amp;#x27;re not going to be threatened by breaking the ad-supported website model. If anything, the traditional newspapers will be saved by this, because if free online news disappears, people will start buying newspaper subscriptions again.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I think either the EU will backtrack on this once they see that Google and Facebook can easily force people to consent&lt;p&gt;They can&amp;#x27;t. The consent has to be for a specific purpose.</text></comment>
<story><title>Publishers Haven&apos;t Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is</title><url>https://baekdal.com/strategy/publishers-havent-realized-just-how-big-a-deal-gdpr-is/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rossdavidh</author><text>In fact, I think the author is underestimating the impact, right here: &amp;quot;Of course, making this change will have a dramatic impact on your revenue for single-visit traffic, because you basically have to design your ad model to work completely differently from how it works today.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;No, it will basically make a newsmedia site unprofitable.  I think it is the EU that has not fully thought this through.  Most of the news industry is already sickly, financially, and they mostly have no model other than advertising (with a very few exceptions).  The reason all this data got collected, was to try to make the advertising valuable enough that they could sell it.  It may be that it never really worked, but it sure won&amp;#x27;t work without it.  I think either the EU will backtrack on this once they see that Google and Facebook can easily force people to consent (because people consider those websites too valuable to do without), but most other advertising-supported media cannot; or they will see that the long-term impact of this is that it accelerates the current death spiral of newsmedia, as all ad spending goes to Google and Facebook and almost no one else.&lt;p&gt;I leave it as an open question as to whether this would be a good or bad thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Arqu</author><text>I completely disagree with this. Firstly, the media currently are too lucrative for my taste and thats why we have everyone being a journalist and publisher. By cutting down on the easy money, only those worth surviving will probably stand. This will seriously cut down on more than just ads, ie fake news and unverified sources. An alternative I&amp;#x27;d love to see is sponsored articles as the main source of income for these. Let the corporations have to pay bigger bucks to have their posts published. This will hopefully reduce the clutter, force the media outlets to provide quality content to keep a certain level of trust and quality to attract businesses as well as a good targeted audience.&lt;p&gt;Personally I&amp;#x27;d live to have most media completely in the dark about visitors to solely speculate on the quality of their own content. Only metric they need is daily visitor count. Everything else can be shaped by type and quality of content. A great example is HN where we have a very targeted audience due to the content it serves. It obviously also has some sponsored articles but also the indirect benefits it has on new startups and so on. Just treat it as TV marketing and not a per person customized monetization strategy.</text></comment>