ABSTRACT
The technology of the Internet decimated newspapers. It did so by exposing the great lie of the newspaper industry: that newspapers sell news. Newspaper proprietors realised that they had solved the difficult problem of getting these sheets of paper in front of people. The newspapers were left with news and opinion, which few people valued enough to pay for. It turns out that newspapers did not sell what they thought they did. They thought they sold news when they actually sold distribution—the ability to reach readers—to third parties who can, thanks to the Internet, access that distribution cheaply for themselves. In the pre-Internet era, publishers could protect the value of content because they were members of an elite few—an oligopoly—that controlled access to distribution. Mobile advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the advertising market, as consumers switch their time and attention to smartphones and tablets and away from newspapers, magazines and the desktop Internet.
