Popcorn or toasted marshmallows?

Watching the American news media collapse is entertaining.

Axios reported, “Traffic referrals to the top global news sites from Meta’s Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, has collapsed over the past year, according to data from Similarweb.

“Why it matters: Website business models that depended on clicks from social media are now broken.”

Sit back and enjoy the show. We are watching the empires built on lies melting like that cake in the dark in MacArthur Park. All the sweet, green icing flowing down. Tut-tut-tut. News media outlets will never have that recipe again.

Axios reported clicks from Facebook and Twitter declined from 170 million in August 2020 to 44 million this August. The days when Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey had the power to rule the online world disappeared. Poof. Gone.

Four years ago, Axios reported, “Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads.

“Why it matters: Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that. If Facebook were to ban — or even limit — ads, it could upend Trump’s fundraising and re-election plan, GOP officials tell Axios.

“Trump relies heavily — much more so than Democrats — on targeted Facebook ads to shape views and raise money.”

And Zuckerberg did just that. If the Twitter Files that Elon Musk released are any indication., the federal government replaced that money in the name of stopping disinformation and misinformation (aka the truth) from spreading.

Among the things Facebook and Twitter censored were HCQ and Ivermectin being helpful in combatting covid. Thousands of people died because of this.

The diabolical duo also blocked the New York Post from promoting its expose on Hunter’s laptop. None of the rest of the media stood up against this state-sponsored censorship. Now they are losing 100 million or so clicks a month?

Hahaha!

As you watch the media collapse, which do you prefer, popcorn or toasted marshmallows?

Axios told its readers, “A slower ad market and less reliable traffic contributed to a record number of media job cuts this year.

“Efforts to reach voters with trusted information are becoming more difficult as tech platforms lean into viral trends, instead of quality news.”

By trusted information, Axios means the Steele Dossier that Obama used to cover up his use of the FBI to spy on Donald Trump.

They reap what they sow as their lies catch up with them.

The lying news media is not alone in having problems with online advertising. Vidhi Choudhary reported in February, “The digital ad market is in a slump.”

She wrote, “Last week, tech giant Alphabet reported a 3.6% drop in Google’s advertising revenue to $59 billion from $61.23 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. Facebook parent Meta saw a drop of 4.2% in advertising revenue in its fourth quarter quarter earnings. The pace of growth in Amazon’s advertising business also decelerated to 19% in the most recent quarter, compared to a faster 32% year-over-year gain during the same period last year.”

Are you having fun yet?

Which do you prefer, pink champagne or cherry cola? C-O-L-A cola.

Chris Gadek, VP of Growth at AdQuick, declared, “Online advertising is dying. And not a dignified death, surrounded by loved ones and kindly nurses. It will be a gruesome death by a thousand cuts. I can’t wait.”

He noted the ads are clickbait, flash ads (you are the millionth customer), and “tracking and profiling.”

He wrote, “The ad-tech industry built large, detailed profiles of individual consumers, their interests, and their preferences. These ad-tech businesses acted almost like a private intelligence agency. Through their surveillance, they could deliver ads with gravity-defying precision.”

The backlash was and is intense. The EU actually did some good for the world in making companies stop tracking people. Ad blockers made their way into browsers. I recommend the Brave browser itself as well as its search engine.

Online sites picked up on that. When you go there with a non-Brave ad blocker, a popup will say the equivalent of we noticed you are using an ad blocker. Please, whitelist our news site so we can feed our starving families.

The we-noticed line undermines their credibility because it is such an obvious lie. They didn’t notice. They frisked your browser for an ad blocker.

I have a theory that the American media has adopted the Pravda model. The newspaper’s reason for existing was not just to spread propaganda to fools but to get those not fooled to distrust everything they read. That is quite a trick.

“We noticed” also reinforces the determination of ad blocking people to continue to block ads. Obviously, a certain percentage of people white list or the companies would not bother posting these notices. I block ads because of their annoyance.

The real threat to online ads are the privacy concerns that brought on EU regulation.

Gadak wrote, “These actions have a trickle-down effect. It’s not merely that lawmakers and tech brands are making life difficult for the online advertising industry. It’s that, as a consequence, digital channels are increasingly less attractive (or useful) for advertisers. And so, they’re looking to spend their budget elsewhere. A great example is audio advertising, which grew by 57.9% in 2021, and continues to expand at a phenomenal rate.”

The online ads ship is sinking, just as newspapers and other news media board the boat.

As you watch the water rise, which do you prefer, recliner or hammock?

Oh, some of the Newsosaurs will survive. Tyrannosaurus NYT now has roughly 10 million online subscribers giving it a far bigger reach than it ever had with print alone.

But those subscriptions come at the expense of local newspapers, which is just as well. The inherent liberal bias aside, the reporting has gone from spotty to dopey. The papers are now the size of comic books and read that way.

Judging by reader emails, many of my subscribers are former newspaper readers who grew to resent the local papers they once supported. Journalists not only lied but they betrayed their biggest supporters. The comeuppance was inevitable, overdue, and fun to watch.