The UK is considering Australian-style rules to make Google pay the media
Digital platforms relay massive loads of content to their users by the second and make money off of them by selling ads off their engagement. The journalism industry has had problems dealing with the likes of Facebook and Google in terms of sifting and labeling what’s trustworthy, but the biggest stumbling block has been about money. The latest salvo between both sides centers around a report backed by the British newspaper industry that is making the case for a cut of Big Tech’s revenue.
Earlier this month, the News Media Association published a paper authored by Prof. Matthew Elliott at the University of Cambridge who estimates that the news organizations contribute at least £615 million and as much as £750 million per year to Google’s U.K. revenues — the bulk of it is through direct sales for search engine priority and engagement, but about 12-15% can be attributed to collecting data about news readers via cookies and trackers and then making derivative sales to ad buyers. For Facebook, the news industry is said to be contributing around £235 million annually.
The NMA is using these metrics to rally further support for a national mandate (gov.uk) similar to one Australia put in place last year (Parliament of Australia) that ensures digital platforms contribute royalties to news publishers for use of their content.
In a blog post from today, Google counterargues that the web traffic generate from its search results has contributed £500 million per year for UK publishers by driving ads and subscriptions and that it makes little revenue off of news results. It also says that top news companies keep most of their ad revenues when they use Google Ad Manager and questions the methodology of Elliott’s calculation — one portion was calculated with a model that presumed the removal of all news content on Google Search. That said, Google doesn’t make revenue figures public on the intersectionality of specific regions and verticals.
Of course, none of this bickering can stem the loss of news outlets that cater to rural regions or special audiences. Good reporting costs not just time, but money, and it needs to be seen to make an impact. Google, which says it is in favor of “thoughtful regulation,” makes a big difference in sustaining big publishers, but there wasn’t much substantive talk about how to support the smaller shops from either side.
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