"Well, in fact I'm not. The real causes of newspaper distress
are the diversion of ad dollars from print to on-line placements,
and a plunge in the rates being paid for those same ads. The latter
results in part from the ever-increasing supply of ad-ready Web
pages, and the development by Google of technology that allows
inexpensive ads to be targeted at the pages most likely to generate
sales. That's not the way some newspaper owners and journalists see
it, though. They would like to charge Google, and even small
"aggregators" like me, for the privilege of driving traffic back to
their own ad-bearing Web sites.
"If you think that sounds backwards, you're right. It also
explains why Google's revenues are still rising while the Times
continues to report substantial losses. What Google realized years
ago, but newspapers continue to miss, is the value of enlisting
vast numbers of independent site owners (ISOs) as distributors. By
creating targeting technology that enables even low-volume products
to be cost-effectively advertised via these distributors, Google
was able to harness the full power of "long tail" economics to its
business model."
