News on Google is worth much more than we thought. According to a Swiss study using a unique methodology, combining statistics, surveys and experimentation, the equivalent in Canada would be 647 million per year, four times more than previous estimates.
At the end of January 2023, the Swiss firm FehrAdvice
For Google, which records annual advertising sales of 1.5 billion Canadian dollars in Switzerland, it is estimated that the media contribution would be worth 582 million. A “fair share” of 40% paid to Swiss media would represent 233 million.
The study, taken up by the renowned site TechPolicyPress at the beginning of August, has aroused great interest in countries where the debate over media compensation by large platforms is raging. “We received nearly 70 requests from media organizations interested in doing the exercise again at home, particularly in Canada and the United States,” explains Alexis Johann, director at FehrAdvice and co-author of the study. Although the results have not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the study “is based on a scientific approach” and was supervised by two university researchers, Stefano Brusoni and Ernst Fehr. The latter, he agrees, is a founding partner of the firm FehrAdvice and sits on its board of directors.
The study, moreover, was commissioned by a group of Swiss publishers, Schweizer Medien, “the equivalent of News Media Canada”, notes Jean-Hugues Roy, professor at the University’s School of Media. from Quebec to Montreal.
Mr. Johann recognizes that the study was commissioned by an organization which is obviously not neutral in this debate. “It’s not a secret, but what we’ve done is very transparent. Everyone can see the details of the experiment […], we used an evidence-based approach. Google publishes data that no one can verify, it’s a black box. »
Professor Roy gives undeniable merit to the study: “It seems original to me in the sense that it is the only one that I have seen, among all the studies which estimate the value of journalistic content for platforms, which includes a component experimental, with citizens. It’s not just a survey: we conducted an experiment with subjects. »
Mr. Roy is himself the author of a Canadian analysis which caused a stir in 2021. According to his estimates at the time, Facebook and Google would have generated 280 million in annual advertising revenue thanks to journalistic content from Canadian media.
“Which is far from the 172 million estimated by Heritage officials for Google Search, but close to the amount estimated by News Media Canada a few years ago,” he recalls. In 2020, this collective, which represents 90% of the readership of news media in Canada, estimated the amount that Facebook and Google should pay to the media at 620 million.
Google did not wish to comment on the FehrAdvice study. Instead, we referred to the brief submitted by Google Canada in the fall of 2022 before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. It estimates that Google contributed more than 3.6 billion visits to Canadian news publisher sites, bringing in some 250 million.
“News accounts for a very small fraction of searches,” it says. Last year, searches for news made up only about 2% of searches in Canada. »
A study published on August 8 by the American organization Disruptive Competition Project (DisCo), linked to the communications and technology industry, denounced the “numerous unverified assertions” of the FehrAdvice study. This “shows a lack of understanding of how the digital ecosystem works,” argues DisCo, which instead sees the relationship between Google and the media as “symbiotic.”
