Drewbot

Collection Box for the Back of My Mind

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“ What’s the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us? Sure we can go out and say we have so many millions of visitors and so on. The fact is, there’s not enough advertising in the world to go around and make all the Web sites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people come to our Web site but paying. ”

Rupert Murdoch. The internet is having a field day with this quote and the very idea that someone would want to be removed from Google. While I’d hesitate to recommend this to just anyone, there’s a bit of good thinking behind this:

  • Murdoch doesn’t want volume of users, he wants engagement. He wants dedicated users he can monetize. WSJ has the brand, influence, and pedigree to do this.
  • Engagement is a required before payment. It has to be worth your while. Plus, the engagement media strategy is working elsewhere online: Salon recently said that their business is based on the 500k most engaged users.
  • Google News is good for volume, not engagement with WSJ. Let’s not kid ourselves: someone who follows an article on Google News (whose numbers aren’t amazing) is using Google News for a destination, not WSJ.
  • And then there’s the brand: people who will pay for WSJ know WSJ. They don’t need to Google “financial journalism” to find the site.

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