The debate rages on between two content camps. In one corner is “free content”, the monetization of which requires the development of ever more invasive advertising methodologies. And when that fails? Why, simply add more of what doesn’t work, of course.

In the other corner is “paid content”, led notoriously by Steve Brill and Rupert Murdoch. This camp seeks to superimpose a cable television model onto the Internet.

Both camps are locked in a psychological version of Maslow’s oft repeated slogan, “To the carpenter, all problems can be solved with a hammer.” And meanwhile, as the two camps fiddle their own tunes, Rome is burning.

But before we get to a workable solution for what ails our media ecosystem, let’s briefly recap why neither camp’s solutions work.


Traditional Advertising Subsidy of Content Camp

We are in an advertising free fall. Trust between advertiser and audience has been broken. Advertisers do not respect audiences, and in fact, only treat them as customers. In a perverted rush to consummate sales right now, they have alienated audiences as never before.

This spreadsheet-driven, transaction-obsessed mentality has seen click rates plummet to an industry average of less than .1%.  That's fewer than one-per-thousand (otherwise known as statistical zero.) 

To counter the withering click rate, “clever” folks are doing three things:

1)    Redefining performance with the latest, greatest metric du jour...
2)    Adding more and more ads resulting in more and more clutter and more and more of what doesn’t work...
3)    Violating the audience’s privacy through desperate and disingenuous attempts to target behavior.

In my opinion, these three pseudo solutions can only ensure a continued slide for online publishers.

The Paid Content Camp

When I started out in the home video business, music distributors treated home videos like records.  Book distributors treated videos like books. And periodical distributors treated home video cassettes like periodicals (before DVDs there were these things called VHS and Beta cassettes!).

They were all wrong of course. Home video had its own personality and its own set of rules.

And now Messrs. Brill, Murdoch et al want to treat the online landscape like cable. But the Internet has different rules than cable, and the paid content camp is ignoring some fundamental economic issues. The consumer is tapped out. Real unemployment is over 16%. One only need look at the declining fortunes of premium cable channels to understand that new economic realities require new thinking.

Shifting the economic burden directly to fatigued consumers will not work. In fact, it will soon be a case of "much ado about nothing", because the moment what now masquerades for news goes behind a firewall, a new industry will emerge that will rewrite news stories utilizing the facts. Facts cannot be copyrighted and this information will be free to the public. 

Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, The Video Snack Network.  With more than 100,000 advertiser-friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV studios, the Vidsense Video Snack Network of more than 50,000 safe-for-work websites delivers millions of qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-Per-Visitor (PPV) basis.