Thread · 3 tweets · 17 Dec 2021

Actually, Google's behaviour is key in preventing publishers from monetising. Their approach to ranking (and search monopoly) means that publishers must do significant Google-specific work (eg. AMP) in order to get traffic. AMP CPMs are very low and there's no header bidding.

The model in which a search engine indexes content in exchange for driving traffic was nice; it's also dead, and trying to understand the digital economy from this perspective is bound to fail. Systems like AMP or Showcase keep pushing for greater intermediation.

Publishers are essentially being pushed out of their relationship with readers, simply because one party has excessive control over discovery. This drives revenue down, which makes pubs more dependent on traffic, which means they can't negotiate revenue terms, etc.