Here’s an interesting scenario
A large part of Google’s business is based on providing links to websites – that’s the function of its search engine. Google is able to charge advertising revenue because lots of people use Google to find links to useful sites. Now, if there were no websites at all then Google would not be able to exist, the notion of a search engine would be redundant and a significant element of its large profits would be removed if we all took down our websites. So, could I contact Google and suggest that I want to levy a charge for every visitor that they bring to my site on the basis that Google is, in very simple terms, making money out of the time and effort that we and every other website owner invests in building and maintaining our sites?
Fair to say I’d be laughed out of town. For a number of reasons. Google invests its own time and resources in researching these links (albeit with the use of software that is has developed) so if they are prepared to invest and pay staff and systems then why should I be entitled to a cut? I make this information freely available and providing Google is not passing off my content as its own or taking revenue away from me, then what claim do I have?
Secondly, the whole aim of a website is to drive traffic, to increase visitors – so anything that provides a link to my site and increases visitors is actually a huge benefit to my business. I actually thank Google for providing traffic. And thirdly, the entire ethos of the web is based on making information freely and easily accessible, never more so in this day and age of social networking where link sharing is a core element of status and kudos.
Yet this is exactly the principle that the major media companies have recently introduced for PR agencies and other organisations who charge for providing links to online articles. Here’s their principle – if an agency or a media monitoring service sources a link to an article on a newspaper website and sends it to the organisation featured then the Newspaper Licensing Authority, as of January 2010, is imposing a charge to the agency or service. This is a charge purely for sending a link, nothing to do with cutting and pasting the content into an email, just for sending a link.
Bizarre? Well, yes and on so many levels. Firstly there’s the simple principle that the holy grail of all websites is to drive traffic and visitor numbers, so if Agency A sends a link to Client B, who then visits the site as a result that’s an increase in traffic. The more visitors a site has the more it can charge for advertising, a key source of revenue for the media sites. Those who pay for media monitoring services online do so because it saves them time – at the end of the day this information is freely accessible through Google, but it’s quicker and easier to pay someone to research it. So agencies and media monitoring services pay staff and invest in developing systems to gather this information. They make a profit from this service. Naturally. For the media to then determine that they can add more charges is almost unbelievable.
It’s a bit like hiring a personal shopper to buy clothes – he or she goes to a shop and buys a suit for me from a well known designer. So both shop and designer benefit from the shopper’s client’s custom (in the same way that a visit to a web site counts as custom). But now the shop (which doesn’t charge an entry fee) and the designer charge the personal shopper for using their services to make money.
But perhaps the biggest surprise and disappointment comes in how much this reveals about the newspapers’ understanding of the spirit and ethos of the web. At a time when most businesses are desperately trying to find ways to spread links to their sites, Facebook groups, tweets and some are even paying people to promote links (i.e. actively encouraging people to make money from sending links to the content that they have created) – this is completely the reverse. It goes entirely against the principle of creating, sharing and participating in content. In other words it shows how much the papers are still struggling to understand the internet model and how far behind in their thinking they are. I have sympathy with the challenges of creating a profit-driven content-led model online, but this is not the solution.
Perhaps the papers should look at other models, such as Google or Apple for example, which understand that the more people can create services out of their products, the more success they’ll have. Does Apple charge iPhone app developers? Of course not. It understands that in the new economy if your content or services are strong enough to enable other people to make money out of them then you’re in a strong commercial position.
The most interesting aspect and a matter on which I am still awaiting some clarity from the NLA is that all these sites have invested in technology which actively encourages us to share links to their stories – all sites have social bookmarking, email a friend and recommend options by all stories. So they want us to share the stories but, heaven forbid, if someone else is making money from doing so, they want to charge. My question is, if as a PR agency we use the facility provided by the media websites to share the links are they still going to charge us?
There is an old adage to do with cakes and eating them that springs to mind at this point.
What do you think?