There has been some interesting articles about the changing economics of web publishing. It is clear that multinational corporations made some terrible mistakes by investing heavily in websites during the dotcom boom. As a result, most corporations changed its view of the potential of the web. This was a serious mistake as well. Rupert Murdoch recently admitted that he was guilty of making both mistakes and is now busily investing in the web.
What has caused this change of attitude? The most important reason is the increasing amount of goods and services being purchased online. This was highlighted by the sales over Christmas. In the UK there are more than 32 million online at home. A growing percentage spend more time online than they do listening to the radio. On average people in the UK spend double the time online than the time they spend reading newspapers and magazines. Over 16 million shop online.
Large corporations are discovering that they are losing out to online operations. In recent weeks the New York Times paid $410 million for About.com, Dow Jones ($528m for Marketwatch) and IAC ($1.85bn) for Ask Jeeves.
The fact that people are buying online means that large corporations are increasing the amount of money it spends on online advertising. Online advertising has overtaken radio in total spend. It will not be long before it overtakes newspaper advertising. This is what is scaring Rupert Murdoch. Online advertising is already destroying local newspapers. It will not be long before the same thing happens to newspapers. The decision by the Guardian to make its online newspaper free of charge is now providing dividends. More people read the Guardian online than all the other newspapers combined. It now gets considerable revenues for the advertising it pages carry.
Online advertising is now completely dominated by Google. That is why you are seeing so many adverts on television for MSN Search and AskJeeves. However, I suspect it is all too late for them. Google is already trusted as providing the best search-results. As long as they don’t lose this reputation they are in a position to make their shareholders very rich people.
This has also changed the economics of websites providing free content. They are in a position to make good money via Google over the years to come. This will be the final nail in the coffin for subscription websites. Those early pioneers who saw the web as a means of challenging the media monopoly of the multinational corporations have been victorious. However, this is only the beginning. Ideologues like Rupert Murdoch are reorganizing. It is going to be very important for the right to get back its media monopoly.
