Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2015; the Google News dispute refers to Google closing Google News in Spain in December 2014, and its predictions about industries reflect 2015 expectations, with Business Insider then a growing, profitable digital-only outlet.
On the negative side, the internet and technology will end up forcing a large share of industries and shops to close. From a somewhat more optimistic point of view, business owners can stop seeing the internet and technology as an enemy and start seeing them as an ally. Even so, many industries will be wiped out, while others will simply have to reinvent themselves.
That is how clearly Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, sees it. He gives a very sharp review of what will happen, sooner rather than later, to certain industries that still see the internet as their enemy and will therefore go bust or lose ground to others that embrace this change in the business world.
1. Middlemen (estate agents and travel agencies in particular)
Jarvis is quite clear that middlemen will not be needed for much longer. Today the internet brings buyer and seller together with astonishing ease, and they will no longer need to pay those commissions that, in some cases, cause so much controversy because they are considered too high.
The first middleman to be affected will probably be in real estate, since there are plenty of property portals where, with a few simple filters, a buyer can find what they are looking for and contact the seller directly. Does that mean this role will disappear completely? Probably not, although it may have to take on other, higher-value functions, such as legal matters, advice or some of the other ideas Jarvis put forward.
And obviously, in the travel agency sector, websites and online comparison sites are already wreaking havoc on the agencies’ business. High-street offices where you book a trip probably have their days numbered.
2. Journalism
Perhaps the media in general (and Spanish media in particular) are the slowest to see their uncertain future if they don’t wake up. The most recent case was the latest attempt to make Google News pay for linking to news outlets, when in fact they should be the ones paying Google, or at least be very grateful to remain indexed.
When he wrote the book a few years ago, Jarvis was already pointing out how foolish some news outlets were being in trying to make Google pay (they had to back down when they were hurt by Google removing them from its service). He drew a kind of analogy in which Google News was the newsstand owner.
Has any newspaper ever told a newsstand owner that if he wants to sell its papers, he has to pay the newspaper? Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Well, Google News is the newsstand, and the links to the media are your free advertising.
According to Jarvis, the printed newspaper will end up disappearing, because there is an underlying problem tied to another industry that will also be forced to change, and it directly hurts newspapers, magazines and television. Business is moving towards digital, and while most media outlets are laying people off and losing money, there is Business Insider, a digital-only outlet that is hiring and generating ever larger profits running into the millions.
The difference between Business Insider and the Spanish media? BI has understood the business and is going along with the change. The Spanish media are fighting the inevitable.
But journalism on the internet is also changing
I often hear journalists laughing at people who think they are journalists because they have a camera or a smartphone, record their videos and write an article about what they have seen. And I ask: where on earth is the joke? That is journalism, and in most cases those people publish what they see without any bias or manipulation.
More and more, the media use spontaneous information from people who have never studied journalism.
Journalism today leaves a lot to be desired: manipulated news, and journalists working for an outlet that forces them not to tell the truth because of a political colour or economic interests.
That kind of journalism, and those newspapers, will tend to disappear as people (their consumers) become aware and want to know the truth, not the newspaper’s truth.
3. Mass advertising
Mass advertising is one of the sectors that moves the most money in the world, but it is in real danger and, according to Jarvis, completely outdated.
It is only a matter of time before companies realise that it can be more profitable to advertise on a website with 300,000 visits a month than in a magazine with a print run of 500,000 copies or on a television programme with average ratings.
Why? Because an ad in a magazine does not guarantee that everyone who picks up one of those 500,000 copies will see your company’s advertisement. On the internet, by contrast, the trend is to pay for results. In other words, the advertiser only pays when there is an interaction (an interest in its ad). So the results are measurable.
Of course, I don’t think television advertising will disappear, but perhaps, with newer, more digital televisions, someone will find a way to place banner ads on the screen so that the advertiser only pays when a viewer at home decides to click on the ad from the sofa.
In a way, that would spell ruin for the multi-billion advertising business, but someone will do something like it, and advertisers will try it.
Likewise, users are consuming more and more internet and less and less television. The future will probably be television programmes delivered through YouTube channels, where advertisers pay for every 1,000 views. No tricks, nothing hidden.
So these would be three industries: one of them (middlemen) will probably end up disappearing, while the other two are already in the middle of a process of change, and any company that fails to adapt will probably have a bleak future.
Further reading
Featured image: Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
