Paul McIntyre warning: Facebook, Google a dangerous duopoly devouring local ad market
By Paul McIntyre in today’s Media section of The Australian
It’s truly gobsmacking to hear some of the debate in last week’s Senate committee hearings on media reform and the imminent threats to media diversity and local content without any serious reference to the profound impact the two global tech-media superpowers, Facebook and Google, are having on local content and media economics.
The comments from Prime Media’s CEO Ian Audsley last week will probably prove more prophetic than most care to imagine. “It is fair to say that in a drought it is the edges of the lake that dry up first,” Audsley told the Senate committee. “Three years ago, when I sat here, my company was worth $366 million. Today it has a market value of a $130m. The structural change has hit us substantially.”