{"id":10802,"date":"2020-10-06T23:23:49","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T23:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/?p=10802"},"modified":"2020-12-22T21:15:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T21:15:56","slug":"who-pays-for-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/who-pays-for-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Pays for the Media?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Television shows in the 1950s and 1960s were often sponsored by a single advertiser. In return for financing the show, one advertiser would receive <em>all<\/em> the promotional spots on the show. Sometimes the stars would even appear in the commercials:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/adGf8MV69as\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As TV shows grew more expensive to produce, the \u201csponsorship\u201d model gradually gave way to the \u201cparticipation\u201d model, where multiple advertisers participated in big blocks of commercials, which grew more and more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>Today, advertisers pay $5 million for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, not to mention the cost to produce and market the spot. Here were some of the top-rated from this year\u2019s game:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XF3wOrWBKjc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>a&gt;<\/p>\n<p>It costs a lot of money to produce the organized violence that we call professional football. So advertisers bring their best game for the big game, and we not only <em>watch <\/em>the commercials, it&#8217;s part of the show.<\/p>\n<p>Online, though, it&#8217;s a different story. <em>We expect online content to be free<\/em>. We get annoyed when an ad plays before our YouTube video, and we install ad blockers to get rid of annoying banners and popups.<\/p>\n<p>This is a problem for online content publishers &#8212; which includes your favorite bloggers, online news sources, and general reference sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesaurus.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thesaurus.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allrecipes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AllRecipes<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_through_advertisements\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever it takes 30 seconds to load a web page due to all the bloatware and ads, that\u2019s an online publisher just trying to earn enough money to eat. Using average online ad rates, web publishers would have to serve 2,000,000,000 ads \u2013 <em>two billion ads! <\/em>\u2013 to equal the revenue from one Super Bowl commercial.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a lot of annoying banners.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Brave model<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10812\" title=\"Brave\" src=\"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Brave1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Brave1.jpg 320w, https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Brave1-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My teenage son recently turned me onto a new browser called <a href=\"http:\/\/brave.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brave<\/a> that has an interesting model. It gets rid of all ads and tracking cookies, but in return it rewards publishers by allowing you to put money in an account that\u2019s paid out to the sites you visit most.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an example. You put $100 into your Brave account on February 1. At the end of the month, Brave looks at all the sites you\u2019ve visited, and pays out that $100 accordingly. You visited Wikipedia 5% of the time, so Wikipedia gets $5. You visited AllRecipes 1% of the time, so they get a buck. The rest goes to Buzzfeed.<\/p>\n<p>I tried it for myself, but after I installed Brave, I wasn\u2019t able to put money into my account. The model is exciting, but needs work. I\u2019m totally on board with paying a monthly fee to receive some of my favorite content sites, ad-free. I\u2019m tired of my browser crashing every time I look up my favorite flan recipe.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a tough sell, though. We expect online content to be free, and it\u2019s easy to block ads. (About 25% of us use ad blockers, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibtimes.com\/how-many-people-use-ad-blockers-depends-whom-you-ask-2384864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">eMarketer<\/a>.) We want the news, but we don\u2019t want to pay people to write it. We want entertainment, but we don\u2019t want to pay people to produce it.<\/p>\n<p>The content doesn\u2019t create itself, folks. Fortunately, I have a solution.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Back to the Future<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As in the early days of television, <em>companies can sponsor content<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Author Clay Shirky has pointed out that <a href=\"http:\/\/archives.cjr.org\/overload\/interview_with_clay_shirky_par_1.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">our current media model is kind of broken<\/a>. Say you&#8217;re watching the nightly news, and they&#8217;re covering the war in Syria. They break to a commercial for Pampers. In a way, Pampers is paying for the war coverage in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Wouldn\u2019t Pampers rather pay for a report on new experiments with preschools? Or the latest findings on child psychology? Or how to be a better parent?<\/p>\n<p>A better model is for <strong>companies to pay for content directly<\/strong>, like in the early days of TV. If you\u2019re a travel blogger that wants to write a 5,000-word article about your trip to Italy, it should be easy to find an Italian hotel willing to pay for you to write it.<\/p>\n<p>If a magazine has an advertiser that sells luxury watches, it should be able to create a feature about how humans invented the measurement of time.<\/p>\n<p>If a news program wants to broadcast a story on education in schools, they should be able to pay for it with a sponsorship from MathWorks or Kumon.<\/p>\n<p>In short, <strong>companies pay for the costs of creating content<\/strong>, in return for a sponsorship. Here\u2019s why this model will work so well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Better quality ads.<\/strong> It eliminates the vast network of media companies that only exist to distribute low-quality advertising against low-quality content (i.e., the banner ads you see every day).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Better quality content.<\/strong> The sponsorship revenue comes to content creators directly, so they can spend more money creating better content.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Happier advertisers.<\/strong> Being associated with good content in a clear and direct way is quite appealing. (It\u2019s better than Pampers underwriting the war coverage in Syria.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are the objections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThis means companies will control the news.\u201d Not the case. Journalists still have independence to come up with their own story ideas, that can then be sold to advertisers.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe\u2019ll only have media that is paid for by companies.\u201d We only have media that\u2019s paid for by companies now. This is a more efficient and effective way to do it.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat about public interest stories? What company will pay for investigative journalism like in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Zg5zSVxx9JM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotlight<\/a>?\u201d If the journalism is truly good enough, there are companies who will want to fund it. (After all, PBS has been sponsored for years by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sgptv.org\/sponsors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">companies like these<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Someone has to pay for the media \u2013 especially online media. If we\u2019re not willing to pay, and we\u2019re not willing to click ads, then companies need to pay. To do that, we need a model that allows companies and content creators to hook up directly.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what we\u2019re working on at Media Shower. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n<p><em>You might enjoy my book <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Mind-Hacking-Change-Your-Good\/dp\/1501105655\/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1480273805&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Mind Hacking<\/em><\/a><em>, because it pays for itself.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"ms_click_tracking\" href=\"https:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/media-manifesto\/?__mscta=2857_53490_132\"><img class=\"fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/mediashower.com\/static\/img\/ce\/AC13C2C0-1EB1-11EB-B071-FD86B27D50D9\/MediaShower-CTA-5.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- Begin Media Shower Content Reporting code --><img style=\"height: 1px; width: 1px; border: 0px;\" src=\"\/\/mediashower.com\/content?Action=tp&amp;cid=53490\" alt=\"\" \/><!-- End Media Shower Content Reporting code --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Football is organized violence. Advertising is organized chaos. How can our current media model get better? <a href=\"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/who-pays-for-the-media\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[459],"tags":[58,367,208],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10802"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15757,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions\/15757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}