Business of Media
Meta’s subscription play could deliver mighty pay-off
This Friday will mean very little to a regular Instagram or Facebook user. But for local influencers, it marks the beginning of Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious plans to win a slice of the creator economy, reports Nine Publishing’s Zoe Samios.
Meta Verified, a new subscription service outlined in a blog post by Zuckerberg on Monday, will attempt to give content creators more of what they want: authenticity, visibility and one-on-one communication with the social media behemoth.
For creator Elle Ray, a student with 57,200 Instagram followers, signing up to Meta Verified is a no-brainer.
“It’s not a question of whether or not I will use it because it’ll be something that I don’t even have to think about,” she says. “The main thing for me is that you get support – you get a person assisting you with your account issues. It’s a physical human being, and that’s something that not a lot of creators have access to at the moment.”
“It’s going to be such a significant thing for a lot of creators because it’s such a help when you have account issues, for example, if someone’s impersonating you.”
See Also: Meta announces the testing of its new offering Meta Verified
Does paid-for Facebook and Instagram signal end of free-access orthodoxy?
Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire is built on billions of users – and the advertisers who pay vast sums to grab their attention, reports The Guardian’s Dan Milmo.
But that business model is under pressure on several fronts. It is against this backdrop that Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said on Sunday it is trialling subscriptions for both social media platforms.
“Advertising has paid for editorial content and other things for centuries,” says Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and a campaigner for stronger protection of internet users’ data. “I do not see that changing. But the tracking-based ads that snoop on our every move are the historical anomaly, and they are on the way out.”
Facebook and Instagram offer a goldmine of user data for advertisers. Facebook alone has 2 billion daily users, while across all of Meta’s platforms including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger the total is just under 3 billion. Facebook generates revenue from building profiles of those users and matching them with advertisers, who direct ads at people targeting their specific interests and background.
This advertising-based model accounted for 98% of Meta’s $116.6bn in revenues last year, but it faces problems. In 2021, Apple introduced privacy changes that required apps sold on the Apple store to ask users permission to track their activity across other apps and the internet – a key means of gathering data for targeted adverts. Of course, many users have opted not to be tracked, and Meta warned that the change would reduce its 2022 ad revenue by $10bn.
Social media ‘targets teens with booze ads’
Facebook and Instagram have systematically targeted more than 90 per cent of Australian teens who use their platforms with ads for alcohol and junk food after secretly monitoring their online activity, a new study has found, reports The Australian’s Johanna Panagopoulos.
Alcohol ads appeared in the Facebook and Instagram feeds of 93 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds after the social media giants tracked what pages they liked, what they bought and what they said to friends in the comments, researchers found.
By analysing the data of 83 people aged 16 to 25 from mid-2021, researchers also discovered for the first time how Facebook’s ad model was able to determine which young people drank more alcohol without asking them.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, tracks people who use their platforms and turns their activity into a long list of keywords or “interests”.
The average person in the unpublished study by researchers from the University of Queensland and Monash University, in partnership with VicHealth, had 787 keywords, covering all aspects of their interests such as a person’s sexuality and what films they liked.
If one user has a similar set of keywords to another user who engages with lots of alcohol ads, Meta will also show that person alcohol ads.
Bangladesh shuts down main opposition newspaper
The only newspaper of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has stopped publishing after a government suspension order was upheld, stoking fears about media freedom in the south Asian nation, reports Agence France-Presse.
Campaigners and foreign governments including the US have long expressed worries about efforts by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to silence criticism and what they see as creeping authoritarianism.
The Dainik Dinkal, a broadsheet Bengali-language newspaper, has been a vital voice of the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) for more than three decades. It employs hundreds of journalists and press workers and covers news stories that the mainstream newspapers, most of which are controlled by pro-government businesspeople, rarely do.
This includes the frequent arrests of BNP activists and what the party says are thousands of fake cases against its supporters.
Entertainment
Full list of 2023 BAFTA winners
All Quiet on the Western Front has cleaned up at the 2023 BAFTA Awards, taking home seven wins including Best Film, and breaking the record for most awards won by a non-English language film, reports the ABC.
It also won Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film not in the English Language, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Original Score and Best Director.
Australia’s Cate Blanchett was named Best Leading Actress for Tár, fuelling speculation the role will also land her an Oscar win later this year.
Meanwhile Austin Butler beat out both Colin Farrell and Brendan Fraser to win Best Leading Actor for his portrayal of Elvis.
Still sporting his now-infamous Elvis twang, the actor got choked up thanking the Presley family during his acceptance speech.
Television
“People are still talking about Overnight ratings”
When ratings shift to daily VOZ numbers we’ll start getting Overnights + BVOD (streaming) numbers, which will help reflect the way we are all watching Television, reports TV Tonight.
Currently those are issued as part of Total TV numbers (along with Regional numbers) a week after broadcast.
While it might have been good to kick this off with the first week of survey, there’s no clear date of when it will commence.
James Warburton Seven CEO said last week,”People are still talking about Overnight ratings. (In) the 7 day ratings you get the catch-up but you actually get the BVOD and VOD number.
“VOZ is… I can put my hands on it, I can almost touch it and feel it, being a director of OzTAM. It’s not that far away and that’s been talked about for a long period of time. Convergence is where it’s at.”
Mark Holden unhappy with the use of the touchdown catchphrase on Australian Idol reboot
Former Australian Idol judge Mark Holden is “hurt” and “disappointed” his catchphrase “Touchdown” — paired with the famous windmill-meets-gun slinger hand gestures — has been rebooted on the show, reports News Corp’s Nui Te Koha.
Holden, an OG Idol judge alongside Marcia Hines and Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson, worked on the-then Channel 10 show from 2003 to 2007.
But Holden said he is “hurt” over the “Touchdown” resurfacing on Channel 7’s reboot of Idol, with Harry Connick Jr, Meghan Trainor, Kyle Sandilands and Amy Shark in the judges chairs.
Holden told the Herald Sun: “My family and I are a little bit hurt by it, to be honest.
“I thought (Idol producers) would’ve reached out to me. These people are my friends; well, some of them. It’s hurtful they haven’t bothered to reach out.”