Publisher Traffic Tumbles in Australia

A big thanks to Ronan for taking the newsletter reins yesterday. You were all in very safe hands.

Overnight, early data shows that publishers have seen traffic drops since Facebook cut off news in Australia, the platform’s nuclear response to the nation’s proposed law.  

I spoke with publishers and analysts about the consequences, intended or otherwise, of the two platforms’ very different approaches to the Australian Code, which requires platforms to pay publishers to display their content.

Check out the full piece for the details, but, you can guess that publishers are, once again, in the crosshairs. Facebook has proven that it delivers sizable traffic to publishers. Rather than staving off the ramifications of the code, this will underline that its market dominance needs a good looking at, just in time for U.S. and European regulators to sharpen their focus.

But there are notable issues with the Australian Code, like how it challenges the idea of the open web, how it fails to address the platforms’ dominant position in digital advertising and their potentially harmful algorithms. While set up to redistribute funding to ailing local media, will any of this extra money turn into hiring more journalists? We can hope!

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Lucinda

Lucinda.southern@adweek.com

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