How publishers and advertisers can balance privacy and monetization

If you’ve visited any website lately, you’ve noticed a pop-up that asks you to grant permission to collect data and notify you by email about updated privacy policies. That’s because of a new privacy and data protection regulation in Europe.

The European Union has always taken a stricter view of privacy than the U.S., and it recently introduced a law dubbed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that harmonizes data protection across Europe and gives people control of their personal data. It also imposes strict rules on those who host and process this data, no matter where in the world they’re based.

The regulation called for companies to comply with its requirements by May 25, but roughly 80 percent of companies aren’t yet ready to do that, according to a report by compliance firm TrustArc. I recently visited Barcelona and moderated a panel at Marfeel, a mobile web optimization, engagement, and monetization company based in Spain. We talked about GDPR and how publishers and advertisers can balance privacy and monetization.

Our panelists included Xavi Beumala, CEO of Marfeel; Rithesh Menon, vice president of monetization and account management at Good Media Group (which includes Good and Upworthy); Tony Farrelly, owner of Farrelly Atkinson and publisher of Road.cc, which is a British based cycling website; and David Webb, CEO of Timera Media, which publishes history sites such as Vintage News and World History Online.

Here’s an edited transcript of our panel.

Dean Takahashi: I am not an expert on this subject, but these people are more expert than I am so that’s a good thing. I’ll just be asking some of the questions. And Rithesh, you wanna introduce yourself and what you guys do?

Rithesh Menon: I work for Good and Upworthy, and I lead all our firm’s monetization and account management affairs, and I’m based in New York, but I’m happy to be here. Good and Upworthy are focused on basically uplifting content for the last four to five years. We are also a social-first publisher, so we were one of the publishers that blew up with the growth of Facebook in the last few years. But we are also one of these publishers that is also actively trying to figure out how to live in a post-Facebook world, and by that I mean Cambridge Analytica and everything else. So this is a great discussion to be a part of.

Xavi Beumala: I’m the CEO of Marfeel and what we do is mobile web and 360 mobile solutions.

Tony Farrelly: I’m the publisher of Road.cc, which is a British-based cycling website. I’m from an editorial background. I’m probably about as GDPR-savvy in some aspects as Dean — but … our task is really grappling with the consequences of GDPR, which at the moment are irritating pop-ups, ironically.

David Webb: I run Timera media. We also are a social first publisher, and we specialize in popular history and military history. Our biggest sites are the Vintage News and World History Online.

VentureBeat: So does anybody wanna take a crack at the GDPR, explaining this, why we care about this enough to talk about this on here?

Farrelly: It’s something that has been building for years through the European Commission, which — the way the European Commission works is a slow gradual pace, and because possibly it’s been building for years, it took us all by surprise because it’s been going on for so long we forgot about it. And the aim is a laudable one, that people should have control over the data that is stored by publishers, probably more, really, advertisers than publishers, I would say, but we didn’t think it through. So at the end of the day, the digital landscape is changing so fast that actually — and the pace that they create law is so slow — there is a disconnect between the law’s intention and its application. Yeah.

VentureBeat: David? 

Webb: I think that the best sort of explanation of GDPR in a nutshell … it was actually a sign outside a butcher’s shop in Italy, and the sign read, “Warning: If you enter this shop, we may remember your face or your name and your meat preferences. If you don’t agree, walk through the door and shout out I agree, in which case we’ll serve you chicken.” I think probably that’s about the letter of that law. (laughter).

Beumala: The funny thing about GDPR is that it is a law that was built to protect citizens from companies like Amazon, Google, or Facebook, and the reality and the recent achievement of the law is that those companies are being more empowered. Because actually, they are the only ones that will be able to get more data and be allowed to use it and use the network potential that they have, that the rest of the world cannot have.

VentureBeat: Xavi, can you explain that a little?

Beumala: So in the end, GDPR, the way it’s set up and the way it’s written down — Google is all over the place and Facebook is the same, so it gets in as a habit. So as soon as they have an entry point like Amazon, Facebook, or Google, Gmail, Yahoo.com, or world maps, they have first-party data. This data — they can have a lot of the consent from users to go and use it, [which means] allowing them to use this data elsewhere on the internet. Whereas, in the rest of the world we ask for consent on a smaller site to our users, and we don’t get that consent. The big guys have the consent, so it’s the big versus the small. It’s a big advantage. It’s the network advantage, and they have services which all of us would accept and opt in to use, right? So I think that the law was trying to be like a tax or something like this for those companies, and the law has not achieved that. Actually, it’s the opposite.

Menon: I think what I like about what Xavi and Tony have said is that, in theory, GDPR should have given publishers, and ultimately readers, users, some sort of leverage. I can argue that, I think in the long run perhaps, that might happen to some extent, but I don’t think it took away any kind of leverage or advantage [from] the big players, mainly the ones that they were trying to deal with. I don’t think that actually worked. So the end result is that, from our perspective, at least as publishers, these [platforms] still have leverage. What’s really changed is, from Tony’s point, I mean, you are putting up with a lot of annoying pop-up things. It’s actually making it a little harder, and in fact, in some cases, a lot harder. So it’s very interesting. I think in theory it means to do well, but I don’t think it was quite thought out, actually.

Beumala: Even the execution — because when we think about GDPR, why didn’t they enforce browser levels to do that? I mean instead of doing it on a one-by-one site, why don’t they put it on the browser level or even at the operating system level? Because again it’s two big ones, Android and IOS, and you have finished them all. They promised that, and it didn’t happen like that — instead we are getting the pop-up war. You say the GDPR shouldn’t have pop-ups. We have the GDPR pop-ups, and we have the cookie policy pop-up, which still exists.

Menon: People like us, trying to get email, that’s not a pop-up.

Beumala: News and subscription. They don’t just show up as a display in the body, so it’s a pop-up actually.

VentureBeat: So everybody’s first reaction is “I don’t need to know about this, or I should pass this to my lawyer or completely ignore it.” But it has floated up to your level. It’s on your radar, to your awareness at some point. What brought it there? Why? Does it have something to do with the $27 million fine for violations or four percent of your annual global revenues?

Menon: So I think for us, at least, what brought it to our attention — again, ironically — was not the readers themselves. It was actually the agencies. So we were meeting a lot of agencies and brands. They started talking about it, and everyone was like, “You’ve got to be GDPR-compliant,” and it was asked in a way where they were not quite sure what that means, but they know that whoever they work with has to be. So, essentially, it was like, “We are not quite sure what this is, but you guys should figure it out. If not, we are not gonna give you the very little money we are giving you already.” So that’s how it came to our attention. So for us, part of the impetus behind this has been really to ensure that, initially, it was basically to make sure that we were in the good graces of these guys. 

VentureBeat: And how long ago would you say this has been going on?

Menon: So, I think — at least in the U.S. — we’ve been complaining and sort of generally being annoyed by this for the better part of the last 10 months. And it really became a discussion point maybe seven months ago. But during the last 60 days or 90 days, there was just this blind rush, when suddenly everyone started to Google what is ECMP? The next thing is, “Where do I get one?” That’s ironically what I did.

VentureBeat: Xavi?

Beumala: Yes. For us it was a nightmare, I have to be honest, because we had to hire three different lawyers, all at the same time, because the first one came in and he told us his story, and we felt something’s strange, what’s this guy saying? It was a big thing, so we had to hire another one just to confirm what the first one was saying. He told us a different story, and we had to hire another one. And the problem was that the week before, they were still discussing what GDPR meant and what we should be doing, because lawyers know what GDPR should be for a normal company, but not an internet company. And they were like, “We don’t really know, because there are a lot of different ways to understand this thing.” And what made it even more confusing is that there is the law, and there are recommendations. But they are all backed on the same document, so you don’t really know what is a recommendation and what’s the actual law.

VentureBeat: And the lawyers were trying to scare you?

Beumala: Yeah, you know how it is dealing with lawyers. It’s like, “Hey, be careful if you do that,” — there is a line, and they are always trying to be super strict with it; I guess it is their job.

Webb: Also for us, I think the volume got turned up closer and closer to the day. But what we were waiting for was for one of the major advertising companies to become part of the Internet Advertising Bureau community of content management, and we were told it was gonna happen … in the next couple of days, and we were waiting for that before we actually finally implemented our solution. And then the deadline came, and it never happened, and I think even now, a few weeks later, it has still not happened. So you know when you’ve got the largest advertising network in the world not part of the IAB standard — and still [going] to happen — you have to come up with something else in the meantime, which is largely what we did.

VentureBeat: Tony, did you have a different story about this?

Farrelly: Well, no. It seems just the volume increased, funnily enough. We are Europe-based. It wasn’t really on our radar, probably up till about six months ago, and then it was more the ads network saying, “Are we GDPR-compliant?” And I’m saying, well I don’t know. We don’t really hold any data, probably, and just much the same as everyone else here.

Webb: Well that’s the thing with not holding any data. Even IP addresses on server logs is part of the question. The whole thing about IP addresses being part of the private data is again one of those thing which I don’t think is particularly well thought through. Even though the sentiment, I completely agree is the right thing. You [as a publisher] can have private data [of your users] without actually even realizing you have private data.

Farrelly: We’ve reacted in some way. I don’t think the people who framed this law expected the reaction they got. But we’ve all reacted like this, because everyone was worried about at some point maybe getting sued.

VentureBeat: So there is like this parallel development. I guess the law was cooking for this long time. It had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica or Facebook. But when that happened — it seemed like for the longest time nobody cared about privacy issues in the U.S. The lawmakers didn’t. Now they are calling Facebook before Congress and circling back and grilling them about it. When you start connecting this problem to political elections, and then start using the data to try to manipulate an election, then all of a sudden people cared about this, and they thought this was the worst thing in the world, right? So the lawmakers are not acting on this yet, but it seems that happened in parallel and created a difference of understanding among everybody that actually people do care about this someway. Is that interpretation okay?

Farrelly: I’m not sure people cared that much. The only feeling I get from our users is that they care about being hassled. They get that the ads pay for the site, and they get that they may well get followed around to other sites, as the bikes in our case. As they are on a bike website and they are into cycling, they don’t really care. They’d rather that than we ask them for money.

Beumala: Do you really think that GDPR — or the American counterpart that is coming, because it was said that a new law is coming … do you really think that this is going to change something on the consent that Facebook gets? If I’m a Facebook user, a power user — people who use two hours a day for Facebook obligations — if I’m exposed to the consent, I’m gonna say yes [on the consent form], right? So this is not gonna change the reality. [Something like] Cambridge Analytica is going to hop in no matter what. I think that here, and I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, a lot of us on Facebook realize the responsibility that it must have as a company, and we are just [clear that], from an ethical perspective, that certain things cannot just happen. Until several big things like this happen, we won’t get to fully understand that because, honestly, if you have followed what happened with Cambridge Analytica, I don’t think that Facebook had anything directly to do with that.

Webb: They’ve jump all over it, and they’ve reacted to that in a way.

Beumala: They had to.

Webb: Of course, but there are some larger companies that are still sort of doing it by the letter, and I think Facebook had actually embraced the fact that it was an internal issue that they had to address. So I think that’s the positive side of it. And I agree with what you are saying, ultimately, if you are a power user on Facebook, or Instagram, you are going to say “Yes.”

Beumala: And you would agree with anything, even though it’s in plain English and easy to understand? I want to see my friends so ….

Webb: To be part of the platform.

Beumala: Exactly.

VentureBeat: So part of my point is that it seems somewhere companies may have crossed over from thinking of GDPR as a bureaucratic hassle to something that matters to their customers, something that matters to their readers in this case, right? The people are aware of this now, and they actually want this to be a law.

Menon: I think at least, I can’t speak for the EU, but I know in America, definitely, there’s been a greater conversation happening. To your earlier question about regulators to something happening simultaneously, I personally think that the regulators got lucky. I think Cambridge Analytica and the Facebook scandal was the perfect hassle they needed, and it just happened. So I do think, and I know this at least just by reading the way it’s been discussed and reported in the media, I know in the U.S. there is a heightened sense of at least people wanting to know more of what they are discussing, data privacy, and I think that’s a good thing. The one thing I would say as a publisher is that we were being social first, we were very slow to the first-party data party. (That was not intended to pun like that.) The one thing that we learned, and the one thing GDPR helped in that sense is it sort of gave us that kick in the ass we needed to actually move faster to that.

So I think if there’s any silver lining, it’s that publishers in general and the media companies in general are now actually taking responsibility to collect that first-party data instead of simply hoping that Google and Facebook would play nice and share some of that. So, in that sense, there is a silver lining. That being said, though, I think it’s hard because GDPR supposedly has drawn the line in the sand — it’s just that depending on which lawyer and what time of the day you look at it, that line is gonna keep moving. So it’s a little hard, because you are not quite sure. But I think that this is probably the only positive thing that’s come out of it, along with that discussion about data privacy.

Webb: One thing I wanna add to that — I completely agree — in addition, we said we are not sure our readers actually care. One thing our readers do actually care about is if they give us private data, such as their own email addresses, they should expect it to be protected and not forwarded on and not hacked, you know. These things do have implications, data leaks from various credit agencies, for example, which can cause massive inconveniences for people. I think it is right as publishers that we should assure our readers that when they do give us that first-party data, that we actually do care about their privacy. That’s the other part of the equation. It’s a two-way deal, and we want them to give us that data directly, but at the same time, they need to be assured that we are holding up to our responsibilities.

VentureBeat: This was what happened with Cambridge Analytica, I think I saw it a couple of times in Facebook posts from my friends’ group pages. I guess people saying “I’m quitting Facebook, you know, I’m out of here.” And the other ones say, “Why am I being shown lingerie ads?” The other one says, “I’m not seeing those, there must be something wrong with you.”

Beumala: How did that impact on the gaming industry because at the end we,… one of the big impacts was on the publishing and media ecosystem, but what about gaming?

VentureBeat: Well you have to know a lot about your customers.

Beumala: Exactly. Because more of gaming is more about tracking and knowing that someone likes, [for example], group travel … so horrid, that impact.

VentureBeat: Well, they don’t know yet, but generally the techs worry more … this is a solvable truth, just more tech.

Beumala: I think so. The first day of the 25th, it was kind of a crash in terms of revenues, at least at Marfeel. It was not because of any technical mistake, but the whole industry just sort of put all things on hold. No one was moving, buyers just said, “OK, I’m not buying,” so there was a big drop in terms of revenues. And then as we kept moving, things start picking up. I think it’s hard to evaluate, but we are pretty much back on track where we should be, and … we [just] have one more problem. That’s pretty much it, and there are so many of us that are still catching up, but it seems that in a period of a very little number of months, everything will be back to where it had to be with no more problems.

VentureBeat: Are the pop-ups really generic at this point? What do they say? Is there a lot of variation?

Beumala: That is a very funny thing. So the first week, we put a small pop-up [on the site]. It was very clear. We put the terms of service, if you want, accept this, whatever. Then we saw that the acceptance rate was okay [and we said] let’s try and improve it. We made a big pop-up that was blocking the whole UI, and then we started receiving calls from our customers who said that “Hey, in my country, the pop-up is very small, and then it would dim away, so that if you scroll, it would get you to acceptance.” We realized from IAB Spain, Italy, and Germany that they were accepting it, and they would check those who make newspaper sites, and they were doing that, and the law states specifically that a scroll is not accepted as an interaction. But what this was was a recommendation — so in the end, the pop-up is nothing. So because we have very big newspapers, just taking acceptance from a scroll, to be honest, I don’t think it’s fair. But we would see until someone gets sued and has to pay big money and there is a firm resolution, I don’t think we can have an opinion on that, to be honest.

VentureBeat: So as long the lawyers are happy, end of discussion.

Beumala: Lawyers — I think that, ultimately, the only ones making a lot of money are lawyers.

Menon: Whatever revenue we are fighting for, the tech companies, now we’ve got to share that with lawyers, as well.

Now just to your point, I think that tech is part of that solution, at least that step toward a solution. But that — again, looking at it from a U.S. perspective — I think, personally, the U.S. … historically, from an advertising perspective, we have a very promiscuous relationship with data. And so what needs to change almost is, before you get the data in, there are a lot of publishers my size, and companies are having a serious discussion about how we need to rethink the way we actually build up this model — both our relationship to readers and how we actually make money off it.

So tech is part of the solution, but if you don’t actually have any kind of strategy as you move forward, I don’t think tech would necessarily help you. So I don’t think tech, alone — it needs to go hand in hand. That, unfortunately, is also very news-case based. It depends on the publisher; it depends on how you set it up, or on your audiences, how you’ve grown that audience — there are so many other factors that are going into play. But I think tech is something that would hopefully get you there.

VentureBeat: And that’s very confident right now.

Beumala: Seeing ourselves as users, when browsing is done, what do we prefer? To be targeted with things that are out of my interest, or with random things that [I] don’t care [about] at all? That is the first question that we should be asking ourselves, because at the end of the day, there’s no one stealing data. And if I go to buy a TV at Amazon yesterday, why shouldn’t I see it again, instead of seeing a random item I don’t care about?

Farrelly: It would be better if the pop-up said something else. You wanted to see your cart working the way it did the day before yesterday.

Beumala: There was a lot of discussion — it’s not a robot. We’ve had lots of discussions in-house with our lawyers and then with big network lawyers, and it’s like — can we go forward and state [that] you accept the policy? I don’t know the odds of you seeing this so far, but if not you would start seeing uncomfortable words — one of those words that make you feel embarrassed. Because the worst thing about it being there is that if someone doesn’t accept, you can’t cut the service. It’s mandatory to give service to the users. It’s like, I’m a retailer, I have my supermarket, and I must let people get in, allow them to pick things and get out of there without saying goodbye. [To say] they have to say goodbye, that’s the only thing — they don’t have to pay for it. It’s ridiculous.

Farrelly: From communicating with the users’ perspective, one of our big income streams is our affiliates. We have a message that pops up if you click on an affiliate link. We got input, the networks that we use all have input on what it should say. And they state what they want, and we said use this and maybe you want to put at the front why we are doing this, and they took that onboard, and it hasn’t really affected … people just click and say yes.

Menon: I think that’s really interesting. I mean we thought — definitely programmatically — and for most of the publishers that we spoke to, that was the biggest if. But also the other thing that we … I know a few publishers that are saying this. Also, the quality of the programmatic ads suddenly dropped. So all of a sudden, on our newsletter, for example, we had few programmatic [ads before], and we started seeing them. I’m like, this is kind of weird, like we never had this sort of quality problem before. The other issue also is there’s no way for us to make that correlation between that and this, so at this point, it’s like a best guess. We are just guessing that something is happening where these people are — either giving us consent or delaying it for some reason — that that is somehow affecting it. Then when you talk about programmatic partners, they are kind of unsure, as well, because the other issue at this point — we have not gone past the 25th enough to where there’s enough data. So a lot of these folks are, like, “It’s too early to tell what the actual effects of these things are.” So we are all sort of basically guessing at the moment, which in our industry is just not something you wanna do on a daily basis. It’s hard enough when you have all of the data and you are trying to make a logical choice.

Beumala: We have to be waiting several months on the road. On direct sales, this is going to have the same impact once they are able to measure the biggest effect. And then again, if there are any legal issues somewhere in Europe, then I think that things would get more serious.

VentureBeat: Seriously. Do you worry that there’s going to be a downturn that would be associated with GDPR?

Beumala: So the first big change that we identified, for example, CPM, at the end of this month, has grown twice as much compared to previous months — from the first day of the month to the last day of the month. Our understanding of the situation is that as it is, they were keeping money on hold just to see if they were investing it in buying things or not, so the month has accelerated in a way. It might be market users trying to see what is happening. Let’s see if my conversion rates keep going, because at the end, they still need to prove that their numbers … they have a business. Until they prove again their entire value chain, it’s going to take several months.

VentureBeat: Is it also safe to say Europeans are affected by this or everybody around the world?

Beumala: Equally.

Webb: I think the law says [to behave as if] you are serving to a European citizen, wherever they are in the world.

Farrelly: Because some big U.S. publishers just blocked Europeans.

Beumala: Yes. Absolutely. There are startups that are [doing that] as well …

Menon: I personally didn’t know the facts — especially if you are digital-first publisher and social publisher — [at this time] most publishers … I believe those in the U.S. are like, “It is almost impossible to tell who is your audience, whether a European citizen or not.” The classic case is someone from the EU who is in Asia when he’s reading your content, does that qualify? And then that stuff that is hard — especially if you don’t have that first idea of where [they are]. If their presence comes before that [situation], if you need the consent, you have some way of identifying that reader in that whole different scenario. But that’s tough, because if you are not in that space — that type of publication that has that many business models — that’s really hard to do.

VentureBeat: There is a bigger unknown here, and I guess it has to be that worry about the downturn [getting] bigger for you. And this sort of made a certain month unpredictable, and then that messes you up, right? Your business planning also had a weird month, and you’ve lost some data.

Beumala: I think the problem is kind of bigger. So the media publishing industry has been struggling along for the last few years. I would say — it’s one of the most talented industries, as of today, and this year, it’s shaking up month after month, so we’ve got ads, we’ve got our density tool, we’ve got all the SEO changes coming from Google, we’ve got GDPR, we’ve got lots of things, rotating things happening just around this — that [even] if the industry were strong in terms of monetization, this is just hitting [publishers] again and again, and the business model is under extreme [pressure].

Get used to it. So I think that this by itself — if it cost anything, we would say “OK, let’s go and tap in and fix it.” But the thing is this year — and there are still a couple of more things coming this year. The other day I was joking with a colleague and we were saying yeah, Google is promoting most of these things and they keep us busy while they load all their stuff, while making sure we won’t know all about those. Right. By now, I think the challenge for the industry is that it keeps shaking up, and there is not a clear business model that makes it sustainable over time.

VentureBeat: I’m feeling kind of depressed now.

Beumala: I remember when I was a kid, buying a newspaper, well, my mother buying it, and that was the truth. It wasn’t a newspaper, it was the real truth. There was nothing else beyond that. Now you buy a newspaper and it’s like ok, you check on the internet and try on 10 different news sites and you do your own research and you do the due diligence on whatever is going — that is hard.

VentureBeat: Do you have anything to be cheerful about?

Menon: If I provide the very slim silver lining here, going back to your example, I think there was a time perhaps, when the relationship between the publisher and the reader was as straightforward as it got. You could argue those when you bought the newspaper, pre-internet or whatever. Somewhere between the internet coming of age and, basically, three months ago, that relationship became as convoluted as possible. There was an assumption that if I go to a publisher site whose content I like, I am somehow supporting them. The reality is that the money is coming from my pocket and … going through potentially some ads network, some advertiser, some marketer, [it] pays a couple of servers, all this stuff happens, a lot of people take their share.

So what this has done in a way is it’s made the whole process even harder. I think, if you were a publisher and you were to take a very, very long-term view of it, I think the only silver lining, in my opinion, the only thing in any way to be mildly optimistic about is that if you had been discussing internally how to start collecting more first-party data and get to know your readers better, you kept delaying it either because of the walls of Facebook or whatever you want to call it. I think that actually would pay off in the long-term. And I say this with the caveat that obviously a lot of other internal things remain the same, which it never does in this industry, but I genuinely believe that in some way that might be the only positive thing that comes out of this whole exercise. That’s assuming, again, that a lot of things remain the same.

Beumala: I think that there’s something here that we don’t really get at. So if we look at where users come from on a website, we have the power users, which according to publication are 30 percent or something like that. The rest come from a combination of Facebook platform and clients. Can’t we build a business on these 30 percent? With the other ones, the learning curve on getting to know these users is going to be hard, because Google and Facebook make sure you only get them once or twice a month, so the frequency of those visits is much lower.

Then what can we do to make those users super loyal so we get their dollars out of their pockets? So then we get into a mix of content, maybe start producing content about online advertising. I may find a reader may like reading a lot about online advertising but may also like reading other stuff. And this is what Facebook and Google are doing really well. So they have options to keep me entertained, every single day, at different times of the day. They know what they want at every single hour, and replicating it from publisher perspective is hard so.

Menon: But on the front side, if you’ve got a viewer thinking, for example, “At one point I want to get into commerce. I want to potentially get into any kind of affiliate,” this could potentially be that excuse that you needed to do it because if you are getting that deep 20 percent, 30 percent in.

Farrelly: Our website is about 10 years old this year. We had a discussion internally about whether we should we become a social net. One of our competitors is more or less a social website, and in the end we said no. You can’t predict Facebook. Its business model is not clear. With Google it is a simple proposition. Facebook’s proposition is just being big, and that’s it. And then we work out how we are gonna make money out of being big. After all, things like Cambridge Analytica seem to make this happen because all Facebook’s focus is on growth, and then we worry about expanding and any spillage or whatever afterwards, with all the massive amounts of money we would have when we are already big.

It seems to me, coming back to you, the best policy is to have relationships with your site’s core users, grow the core and deepen it. If you are smaller, it’s a lot easier. If you are a niche publisher, the people coming to us have got an interest, so it’s easy to engage them and it is in their interest if we are very generous and we can build a decent size. Equally, the profile of our users is of interest to other advertisers and to programmatic applicants of the net.

Webb: Even Facebook now would say “We shouldn’t be your only traffic source.” That’s actually something again that’s come out of this is where we used to focus of sort of being the best social publisher we absolutely could be. Now we need to do that and diversify and try get that first party data and try to create that relationship with the customers and readers directly and that is exactly the sort of thing that Facebook has been telling us to do as well. It’s tough, we have to change, ultimately like Rithesh said. I think it’s a silver lining. I think the publishers that have passionate audiences will continue to engage them. It’s not gonna be instant, it’s gonna be a tough process of transition but it is something which is gonna be ultimately healthier as a result.

Menon: You know I’m back to being depressed now. I tried to end it on a silver lining but it didn’t work.

Beumala: We will have some drinks now.

Farrelly: At the end of the day, the bottom line is that they do need us to be making money. They can’t make money without us .

Beumala: The end of the thing is those are companies they have massive volume, but their business and their margins are going down, they are very low so they need to keep growing with other businesses. This is what happened with cable TVs, so maybe it could be the same with online media’

VentureBeat: Any questions?

Audience: We need to have a big discussion about fake news. We have elections this year, and there are some people who believe that Google can manipulate though it has not the authority to determine what’s fake news and what’s not fake news. What’s your opinion about that?

Beumala: That we are screwed. Yes. It’s a problem. I think that we get into the ethics situation, where technology might not be ready yet to detect, well peruse content just to pretend to be another kind of content or bait content at the end because maybe it’s not fake, it’s been bait.

Audience: That’s interesting. I’m saying what’s fake and what’s not fake?

Webb: I think in Sweden, they’ve taken a rather holistic approach to this like the swedes often do. I think they teach in schools, they teach kids how to critically think about the information that they read, and check the sources

Audience: But that’s for Sweden?

Webb: Yeah. I don’t think there is a simple answer. Google don’t consider themselves a publisher and you know one man’s fake news is another man’s gospel truth. And who would Google go to and decide that?

VentureBeat: Sometimes the laws have encouraged the big guys to be actually hands off. Where they did not want to be perceived as partisan in any way and yet they have like this common carrier, this platform and if they started reaching too far in determining what’s fake and what’s not fake, deep down in a political way, then they would be cracked down upon.

Webb: Banning opposition parties in instances where opposition parties need to flourish. So it might be long term but I think it’s probably the most healthy way of doing it which is actually getting society to question the relevance like I was told this…

Beumala: There’s such a long road ahead…it’s true. You see something randomly somewhere and you take it as the truth.

Webb: Especially if it reinforces an opinion that you already have.

Beumala: Exactly what you were looking for right?

Audience: [What is the impact on your business?]

Beumala: I’ve been in discussions revolving around this topic and we always end up saying that fake news or what are perceived fake news, there is such a thin line between one opinion, lots of the times when you answer that, you get more criticized, after all fake news can be hey someone has that, that’s fake, if he doesn’t. it’s white or black. But when we are talking about politics, if it’s my opinion, why should it be fake news. It’s just my opinion. If I get my followers and people to follow me and to believe in what I am saying, then we get back into education and warning people and kids with the critics in mind. So in terms of politics, yeah.. I think it’s so hard.

VentureBeat: Influencers are growing big all the time. Much faster than journalists or legitimate news sites.

Audience: Some people can be amazing. I have a cousin who will send me fake news and I never check it, what he sends me.

Menon: You know what’s interesting. In India, there is a non-profit organization which has a number that’s public, and if you get a forward from somebody, you can forward it to them and they would tell you if it’s factually correct or not. It’s interesting but the only thing is again I don’t know the adoption rate. In a country that big with that many users, it would be great if like one percent adopt it but that alone is not going to be enough. If you have mass adoption, that’s a different thing. But it’s interesting. Its way young, they’ve only started doing it early this year or so. It’s actually going to be interesting to see if it works.

Webb: In a way, it’s abdicating responsibilities of an individual. Isn’t it?

Menon: That is actually the scariest; I would actually go for a more depressing thing.

VentureBeat: Are there artificial intelligence solutions somewhere?

Webb: Well, the problem with the artificial intelligence solution is, let’s say for example we are doing something about religion, so many things like the earth was only formed six thousand years ago…

Beumala: That’s an opinion. With an opinion, so it’s not fake. It’s my opinion, whether you like it or not.

Menon: The problem is, with AI it not a matter of… it’s binary

Webb: You don’t have an AI solution to those kind of things.

Farrelly: It sure can be kind of like Facebook just saying the Apollo moon landing happened so anything that is tagged  as fake to the Apollo moon landing, we are just gonna ignore.

Webb: That’s a very simple… and then what are they gonna do? They are gonna analyze and maybe see there is a whole aspect of it that isn’t fake. I think we like to think that all of these big guys, they should really come up with a technological solution and I think as problem as that is, it does abdicate responsibility. We’ve always lived in a situation where we are given lots of sources of information and we know people have grown up to query that information in many cases. And I think now when we have these big providers providing us with content that we might like, it’s an odd conclusion  I think society is coming through which is like oh it’s not our problem, it’s their problem. That’s actually.. I don’t think that’s a healthy situation, I think everybody should have a healthy dose of skepticism. That’s something which I think we need to encourage.

Beumala: At some point, I was seeing couple of these discussions should Facebook….one of the ways to. I think we all agree reviewing on a one-by-one basis was not the best idea. So the idea was should publishers and editors be certified in a way to just be able to publish through Facebook and Google. Through certifications, there are lots of those, there are millions of publishers potentially, but you take your certification process and once a year you have to review it and re-certify, then we have a trust relationship because you have to prove on a yearly basis, contractually, it can say different things. The problem to that was that there were lots of publishers and news producers and information producers that were not actual companies and they are testing individuals and not letting them go through is like banning them in a way. So it’s a problem.

Disclosure: The organizers of the event paid my way to Barcelona. Our coverage remains objective.