by
Athanase Papandropoulos
Media landscape is at stake. Journalism enters into a new era. The internet revolution changes the way of the information flow. However, very often, the information flow is related with such communication techniques, that have nothing to do with journalism. Moreover, Internet fosters the growth of the so-called “free of charge economy”, in the framework of which piracy and communications fraud are getting significantly worrying dimensions. At the same time, “free of charge” becomes the new marketing trend.
Under these circumstances, content combined with storytelling appears to be the spearhead of digital marketing. These two elements consist the “eye catching factor”, which is the major stake of our times, in all levels.
Deteriorating website visits
As print media and publishing decline over the last years, internet has become the promised land for all those seeking an easy way to make money. So, what is really going on?
On the one hand, online publishing does not require any major investment such as purchasing paper or printing costs, while on the other hand more and more advertisers shift their budgets from traditional to digital media.
In “Greek Internet”, the real average of unique visitors in a news website cannot exceed the amount of 150.000 per day. Despite that, dozens of websites send to media shops dizzying and unbelievable data amounting from 300.000 to 1.000.000 visitors per day!
But how can this happen? There are numerous ways.
Several “gangs” out there are willing to offer their special services and get paid (5.000 – 25.000 EUR per month) for counterfeiting the metrics of websites.
One of these gangs uses the thousands followers of (bankrupted) Yahoo in Greece. The editor pays the “experts”, who ensure that the website posts will appear in the bankrupted company’s website. At the same time, these experts create 3-4 Facebook pages, with the same followers of Yahoo, which may count more than 600.000 virtual or not “friends”. A website editor pays in order that his posts appear both in the Greek Yahoo website and also in the particular Facebook pages. Thus, from the 600.000 followers that are going to see a post, even if just 200.000 of them follow the link, they will augment the visits dramatically.
Another way of deterioration is the “security” uploads for servers which are offered by powerful multinational companies that are selling these products.
In addition, many website owners create their servers in order to be able to boost the site visiting rates. Thus, appearing many sites where many apprentices journalists are (copying and) writing with visiting rates more than 1.000.000 single visitors per day. The one million of imaginary readers affect the media shops, which are unable to control the situation. They just accept the data given by the website owners, such us the committee which conducted the Greek national TV licenses contest accepted the new TV channel owners uncritically and without scrutiny.
Thus, media shops reward with huge amounts fake visits by giving adverts to websites with fake readers. As a result, advertisers pay having the illusion of the one million single visits…
This kind of tampering devastates the efforts of websites which try to survive fairly and by paying prestigious journalists, who are “the last of the Mohicans”.
It is these practices that diminish marketing campaigns’ results and prevent the national economy from the much necessary and expected growth. Attention is needed by advertisers. Internet can offer many opportunities as long as you seek for them.
By: N. Peter Kramer
