Prominence for news online: A definitional minefield

The government’s latest media green paper proposes prominence for trusted news on online platforms (separately to potential prominence for public service media content). This involves a collision of totally differently regulated parts of the media landscape.

Prominence could take different forms and include different providers. At present, news is a small part of platform viewing, but many types of providers engage in that space, for a range of public service or commercial reasons.

Defining ‘quality news’ is extremely difficult; designating providers is almost as tricky. There is also the matter of deciding who decides what news to promote.

AI assistants are aiming to break the link between aggregation and discovery. Tangible utility is still the best defence for the online marketplace model that derived value from owning discovery within specific verticals (vehicles, properties, jobs, online resale).

For OpenAI, integrating with the marketplace ecosystem is a chance to broaden its commercial relevance to users across sectors without undue risk.

The expansion of programmatic and the rise of chatbot advertising formats further break down the distinctions between display, search, and classified advertising, promoting both competition and opacity.

Streamers are trying to position ‘engagement’ as the new gauge of success, but in a definitionally opaque way. Netflix says "quality, variety, and quantity" matter, while cutting its viewing reports to annual. Disney says it's about fandom, not just subscribers.

Every streamer is now in the black, but the gap with Netflix continues to widen. Netflix runs at 33% margins; the rest are in single digits. Peacock's first-ever profit reflects World Cup seasonality.

All players have launched short-form vertical feeds to solve discovery fatigue and capture daytime mobile usage. YouTube has proved the economics of this, but SVODs will attempt to replicate this within a premium streaming context.