The value of Taiwan’s digital advertising market reached NT$45.841 billion (US$1.65 billion) in 2019, up 17.6 percent from the NT$38.966 billion in 2018, Taiwan Digital Media and Marketing Association data show.
The main platforms for digital advertising are Google, Facebook, Line and others, with Facebook and Google together accounting for 70 to 80 percent of the total, with a combined worth of NT$36.67 billion.
Although most platforms, including Google, Facebook and Line, do not pay for the right to publish content, most of the advertising revenue in the digital world ends up in their pockets.
This unreasonable revenue distribution not only threatens the survival of media firms such as newspapers, it also affects the advertising industry, including public relations and marketing firms.
This is particularly damaging to the newspaper industry — most newspaper operators work hard to train reporters and produce high-quality content, but as the digital platforms emerged, Facebook and Google began publishing this quality news content without paying a penny to those who produced it. The supply and demand relationship of the information is seriously distorted and unreasonable.
It is only right that Taiwan’s news media receive a reasonable share of the profit so that they can continue producing high-quality original content.
Otherwise, Gresham’s law — that bad money drives out good — would set in, and consumers end up reading only free content, as opposed to quality content.
Australia, among other countries, has over the past few years been exploring ways to support its newspaper industry and other media to fight for content payment from technology giants such as Facebook.
The Australian Parliament passed the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code early this year, taking the lead in enacting legislation and setting a global trend against the technology monopoly.
Other states and blocs such as Canada, the UK, the EU and India soon followed.
On Oct. 21, Facebook and a French news media alliance — with members including Le Monde and Le Figaro — reached a preliminary agreement that the Silicon Valley giant would pay media firms for news content made available on its platform.
As major technology companies such as Facebook and Google are multinational corporations, the power imbalance makes it impossible for individual media companies to negotiate with them for payment.
Taipei should not just stand idly by on this issue. It should instead follow the examples of Australia and other governments in using legislation to help establish a healthy and sustainable environment for the content provision industry and ensuring that the news industry can obtain reasonable remuneration from Google and Facebook.
A payment system should also be set up to keep up with the new industry practice of “paying for news” as soon as possible so that the sustainable development of domestic traditional media can be ensured.
Wei Si-yuan works in the information technology industry.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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