7 years, 11 months ago

Rupert Murdoch seeks to end Google’s ad hegemony after YouTube boycott

New York/San Francisco: Google’s pain may be Rupert Murdoch’s gain. He wants to “choke the money supply to people spreading content like this.” News Corp. is the latest company seeking to capitalize on the advertiser boycott of Google’s YouTube. WPP Plc CEO Martin Sorrell said recently that clients of his company, the world’s largest ad agency, spend most of their budgets with Google, Murdoch’s media empire—including News Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc.—and Facebook, in that order. The move led to a bump in subscriptions, but also caused WSJ stories to get fewer clicks, leading the newspaper’s links to get buried in Google search results, according to a person close to News Corp. Google’s algorithm crawls for keywords, while the Journal’s hardened paywall only allows Google users to read the first few paragraphs of a story unless they’re digital subscribers. The Journal’s parent company, News Corp.-owned Dow Jones, feels it’s being unfairly punished by Google for having a digital subscription model, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

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