By Anna Rawhiti-Connell*
Opinion - Former Herald boss Dr Gavin Ellis thinks the government could help local media by shifting its social media advertising spend, Anna Rawhiti-Connell interrogates his claims.
Photo: AFP / Denis Charlet
Last week, media bosses met with the Epidemic Response Committee. Dr Gavin Ellis, former chief of the Herald, was called as the expert, independent witness.
Ellis suggested the government could help local media immediately by shifting their social media advertising spend, currently focused on Covid-19.
Ellis has since penned this. Most people, including myself, agree Facebook and Google need to pay some kind of levy or tax. The devil will be in the detail. Detail the Prime Minster, the target of Ellis' piece, is fully aware of.
Ellis doubles down on his request to the government by calling out what he believes is the Prime Minister's "millennial approach to social media" and states: "Of course the government needs to reach people, especially in perilous times. It does not need Facebook and Google to do that."
He implies the reason they use those platforms is to reach people without scrutiny (one suspects Simon Bridges would have a different take). He also claims local media can provide all the reach the government needs, that even youth are exposed to digital content, and then cites one New York Times article to support a question about whether the money spent on Facebook in search of 18-54 year olds pre-pandemic was "well-spent anyway".
Ellis' claims require informed interrogation. He would have us turn back time to put a generation's worth of revolutionary change back in a bottle. He is also asking the government to engage in monopolistic and anti-competitive behaviour, and to essentially make their Covid-19 communications less effective. There's not a paid media expert worth their salt who would endorse this plan, nor is it something taxpayers and citizens should support.
Good media planning is the art of matching client objectives and creative to placements and context. For the government, a media plan might include a range of different objectives. Reach, the one Ellis keeps referencing, is about eyeballs, and it's usually only one objective a client might have. No one kind of media placement does everything and it's an irresponsible use of client budget to put all your eggs in one basket. While media might be experiencing big audience spikes during the Coivd-19 pandemic, good media planners understand that people don't spend all their time engaging with one form of media.
Dr Gavin Ellis Photo: RNZ/Dru Faulkner
There are 2.9 million New Zealanders with an active account on Facebook. 2.3 million access Facebook every day and log in an average of 14 times a day. Facebook advertising doesn't just run on Facebook. Facebook ads run across Instagram, Messenger and off-site. Google.co.nz is the number 1 visited site in New Zealand and one of the top 5 things searched on Google last year was 'Stuff News NZ'. Google, while 'stealing content' as Ellis puts it, is also one of the biggest sign posts media have to their content.
Ellis' claim about audiences also conflicts with the last big NZ on Air audience study in 2018. It included numbers on the daily reach of all forms of media. Daily video viewing on Facebook or YouTube has overtaken reading newspapers and news sites for all New Zealanders. For 15-39 year olds, daily reach of online or print news was only 26 percent.
Ellis told the committee news media content was the life-blood of social media. This is a big call because it is nigh impossible to substantiate. Everyone's Facebook feeds are different based on a range of factors. When Harvard-funded Nieman Journalism lab attempted in 2017 to find out how much news makes it into people's newsfeeds, they discovered it wasn't much. Facebook have also moved to minimise the reach of news content in favour of a return to friend and family updates.
This claim reveals a truth that Ellis and many media conveniently ignore. Social media is about people. Content created or shared by people is the life-blood of social media. For better or worse, social media democratised publishing. The disruption to news media was only partially caused by redirecting ad revenue. The breaking of the monopoly on distributed news and information also caused upheaval.
Facebook, in particular, also democratised online advertising. They made it possible for anyone with $20 to create and sell ads, track how effective they were at any time, and change the creative if needed. As users become more experienced, they could build campaigns with a range of objectives beyond mere reach. Anyone can do this without a single call to an ad rep.
News media have done comparatively little to offer the same innovation to their advertisers. They are still the intermediary between an advertiser and the delivery of campaigns.
As media lobby for government support, ask for your donations and, as Ellis has done, try and dictate to government where it should advertise, it's only fair to note they're doing this at the same time as many other sectors, through no real fault of their own, face their own ruin.
This does not detract from the argument that journalism is too important to fail, but our media has the power to tell its story of disruption and decline better than any other industry because they own the means of doing it. They can use their reach in ways most PR agents, lobbyists, and charities could only dream of.
The industry that prides itself on speaking truth to power owes itself, us, and the government a more honest and informed discourse about what is happening, and this must be done with clear eyes and heads out of the sand.
*Anna Rawhiti-Connell is a digital, social media and content marketing consultant and commentator who writes about social media, digital news, politics, diversity and gender equality.