It’s all about advertising. The name of the game is getting ads in front of viewers first and news agencies have no chance of this when most people will see the news on social sites like Facebook. This is a problem that was propagated by new agencies themselves when they took upon registering at these sites as they seen it as a way of increasing readership to their business. Adhering to the terms, conditions and privacy policies set out, they then proceeded to post news content hourly for over a decade and encouraged users to share and comment on Facebook.
It’s almost like they want us to change our internet habits to accommodate their need for advertising revenue. As of late, media in general has been getting a bad rap as people are starting to realize hidden agendas being influenced by advertising money, donations and sponsorship’s.
The bigger problem… It’s all about advertising and Facebook has more effective and affordable advertising than most news agencies. Facebook and many sites offer self serve advertising platforms where you can adjust your cost per clicks, cpm and daily budgets. The news agencies are working on an advertising model which is WAY more expensive. Any time you go to advertise on a website and the only way to advertise is to contact them, this tells you that they only offer media buys and you are already at a disadvantage in terms of controlling your ads (unless your auto companies or other big ticket purchases). It’s likely the minimum to get your ads on your local news websites will be thousands of dollars and with Facebook and many other platforms you can get your ads out within minutes at a fraction of the cost.
First impressions are everything but what if they never see you at all? That is the interesting part as people nowadays want to click less and everything in terms of the internet user experience (UX) is made to help achieve this. So trying to change users behaviour may just lead to news sites ultimately getting less traffic than before the ban.
The real loss will be for the readers and advertisers of these news agencies!
