Google Will Prioritize Stories for Paying News Subscribers

[steven36]

Tech giant said to begin sharing data on potential customers. Publishers have pushed for new tools to find readers who pay.

 

 

Google users who subscribe to newspapers will find articles from those publications appearing higher in their search results, part of the tech giant’s efforts to help media companies find and retain paying readers, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

The Alphabet unit will also begin sharing search data that show who’s most likely to buy a subscription, said the people, who asked to be anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Google executives plan to disclose specific details at an event in New York on March 20, according to the people. Google declined to comment.

 

The moves could help publishers better target potential digital subscribers and keep the ones they’ve already got by highlighting stories from the outlets they’re paying for. The initiative marks the latest olive branch from Silicon Valley in its evolving relationship with media companies.

 

Several publishers, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Washington Post, are focusing on getting readers to pay for their content as it becomes more difficult to support newsrooms with advertising revenue. Many have been pushing Google and Facebook for new tools to drive subscriptions, arguing they should help support trusted journalism at a time when their platforms have been exploited to publish fake news.

 

Facebook recently made major changes to its News Feed algorithm that are expected to shrink publishers’ online audiences. But it’s helping publishers in other ways. In October, the company began a test to support paywalls in Instant Articles, letting publishers process payments directly and keep all of the revenue. In February, Facebook announced a program to help metro papers build subscriptions.

 

Apple, meanwhile, bought Texture, a digital magazine service, this week in what the company said was a sign that it’s committed to supporting quality journalism.

Click Policy

Last year, Google changed its “First Click Free” policy that led some media outlets with strict online paywalls to appear lower in search results. Now, instead of requiring publishers with paywalls to provide at least three free articles per day, media companies can decide how many articles to let Google users read without paying.

 

While tech giants try to forge closer business ties with media outlets, the revenue flowing to publishers remains relatively small. Facebook and Google, which also owns YouTube, represent just 5 percent of publishers’ total digital revenue, according to Digital Content Next, a trade group representing the Financial Times, Bloomberg News, New York Times and other publishers. Google’s AMP program, which hosts articles on its servers instead of publishers’ websites so they load faster, has won praise for helping drive more subscriptions, but “revenue has been slow to build,” the group said in a January report.

 

Google shares rose 0.5 percent to $1,144.24 as of 9:33 a.m. in New York. The stock is up about 9.5 percent this year.

 

Source

[DKT27]

Not sure I agree with this. This is going to force people away from it.

 

Having said, these days, I'm finding it not upto the mark here.

[steven36]

56 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

Not sure I agree with this. This is going to force people away from it.

 

Having said, these days, I'm finding it not upto the mark here.

Yes use to be a good  Chrome  Extension   to bypass paywall sites and Google  removed  it from there store and for a long time it was still at github  now these paywall sites had it removed  you could  use it developer mode still . That being said Firefox still has a good addon to do this . See the way these sites  do you say if read news  on sites like Twitter and and redirect from there it's free and this is what these addons do without having to visit Twitter , Google stop doing that now , they think you should  pay . The news  from most Paywall sites is very biased  and too  far to the left and they write  a lot of half truth,  so i don't see how this  will improve things but Google inc.  is a left winged company themselves so of course they going to do what there bothers in arms say     Kodi.tv  has some nice legal addons  were you can watch the news for free  so they just going to drive more people away from  reading news online  .

[rasbridge]

2 hours ago, steven36 said:

Yes use to be a good  Chrome  Extension   to bypass paywall sites and Google  removed  it from there store and for a long time it was still at github  now these paywall sites had it removed  you could  use it developer mode still . That being said Firefox still has a good addon to do this . See the way these sites  do you say if read news  on sites like Twitter and and redirect from there it's free and this is what these addons do without having to visit Twitter , Google stop doing that now , they think you should  pay . The news  from most Paywall sites is very biased  and too  far to the left and they write  a lot of half truth,  so i don't see how this  will improve things but Google inc.  is a left winged company themselves so of course they going to do what there bothers in arms say     Kodi.tv  has some nice legal addons  were you can watch the news for free  so they just going to drive more people away from  reading news online  .

One America News Network is my preferred news source as it seems relatively unbiased compared to others.  However, I have been unable to find a free source for it via Mobdro etc.

     What is your preferred "free" news source?  Thank you.

[sixoclock]

11 hours ago, DKT27 said:

Not sure I agree with this. This is going to force people away from it.

 

Having said, these days, I'm finding it not upto the mark here.

 

The publishers need to focus on writing good quality contents and Google needs to focus on its search engine instead of focusing on intrusive, targeted ads. The reason why ads revenue has gone down is because ads are becoming too intrusive and people have started to block them left and right. Ads should be like the good old days where ads were just ads like the billboards on the highways. When you drive pass those billboards, they don't follow you all the way to the rest stop and watch you pee or poo. Intrusive, targeted ads are shooting themselves in the foot.