Audience targeting by Big Tech

Owners of news organizations are blaming Facebook, Google, and other big tech companies for their loss of ad revenue. Harper Neidig reports in the Hill,

...According to the Pew Research Center, newspaper advertising revenue has plummeted since the mid-2000s when U.S. papers brought in more than $49 billion from advertising. Pew estimated that number was down to $16.5 billion in 2017.

...The collapse in advertising revenue for publishers has coincided with readers shifting their attention online, giving internet companies like Google and Facebook troves of user data that’s used to target advertisements to tailored audiences.

...“The ability for the tech companies to target audiences using data that's collected across publishers websites is the core issue here,” he said. “Their audience targeting has become more valuable than context, what the consumers actually expect and want, copyright and even facts themselves.”

...Local outlets have been especially hard hit, with more than 1,400 cities in the United States losing a local paper in the last 15 years, according to the Associated Press. Last month, The Times-Picayune, a 182-year-old paper in New Orleans, La., announced it was laying off its entire staff after it was bought by a rival.

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