News publishers and magazines have larger audiences than ever — but also need to create new products and distribution systems to drive a better future. ‘Expanding the View’ is designed to highlight interesting ideas and provoke some thinking.
On May 26, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority announced they were launching an investigation into Google’s advertising technology practices to determine if the company was engaging in anticompetitive behavior.
Expanding the View is a monthly list of stories I’ve read in the last month to get you thinking. Examples of topics you’ll find here include things on Web3, digital business models and other topics that have the potential to intersect with news publishing.
The News Media Alliance applauds the introduction of the “Competition and Transparency Digital Advertising Act,” by Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
The News Media Alliance applauds the European Union for reaching an interinstitutional agreement on the long-awaited Digital Services Act (DSA), which includes measures aimed at reducing the dissemination of illegal and harmful content, services and goods online to increasing protections for minors, banning targeted advertising based on sensitive data, and addressing the use of dark patterns to influence consumer choice.
In addition to Alphabet and Meta, many other companies have found success in the ad tech market by inserting themselves into advertising transactions that once took place between advertisers and publishers. However, three recent developments suggest that ad tech may be negatively impacting publishers even more than previously understood.
The American Economic Liberties Project, MediaJustice and the News Media Alliance have jointly published a report, “Minority-Owned Media and the Digital Duopoly,” which examines the history of minority-owned media and the impact of the ascendance of big tech platforms, such as Facebook and Google, on minority-owned outlets and those targeting underrepresented communities.
In early June, the French competition authority, Autorité de la concurrence, announced that Google had reached an agreement with the authority to settle an antitrust investigation regarding the tech giant’s anticompetitive behavior in the market for online advertising services.
The June 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote speech, which introduced the company’s iOS 15, featured “one more thing” that should have many news organizations paying attention.
USPS just announced proposed postal rate increases that, in some cases, are seven times the rate of inflation. Here are the proposed rates that pertain to newspapers.
