Medium will be laying off a third of their employees:
Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.
That’s a big part of why we are making this change today.
I don’t see much here about what this new approach will be, and without knowing that, I have to remain skeptical. The bigger issue is how most ad-driven media on the internet has worked for decades. It incentivizes clickbait by measuring clicks and page views when advertisers should be more concerned about attention and influence. Online publishers have to make a lot of difficult decisions about what kinds of advertising they want to run, and most of the times they’re completely beholden to what those buying the ads want from them. So you get multiple interstitial pop-ups, impossible to close full screen ads, and other bullshit that advertisers think work because they’re measuring the wrong things. How many times have you accidentally clicked on a mobile ad because of how intrusive it was?
Anecdotally, we’ve seen higher click-through rates on our banners and feed sponsors than I was ever seeing with the horrific ads we were forced to run on AbsolutePunk. But even with that it’s because of our supporters that this website is able to keep running. I still believe readers helping to fund the publications they love will play a big part in the future of online publishing.