What is Content? When is Publishing a Commodity?

People Tolerate (and Expect) Ads:

As Google's ad network gets more efficient and Google controls more bits, almost everything in any commercial market is going to sell something, subsidize another commercial interest, or have ads on it. To appreciate how much this trend will grow, just read the comments on my post about using custom search engines. Many of the comments are insightful, but almost nobody appreciated that not having ads in your internal site search result was a value add for a commercial site. If you look at blog search results for shower gel you will see Google's version of the web. Google and Microsoft already own in game advertisement firms. With Google bidding billions of dollars for part of the US wireless spectrum you can bet that there are going to be even more ads between content producers and consumers.

It doesn't matter what ads appear on the publisher site if they didn't sell the ads directly themselves. Somehow the publisher is off the hook because they didn't know, and it wasn't Google's fault because the system is partially automated.

Newspapers Practicing Arbitrage

Google killed some of the scraper AdSense garbage, but now arbitrage is going mainstream, with newspapers leveraging their brands to publish thin content from freelance writers. Think of newspapers buying ISP data or mining their server logs and suggesting writers create content about crap that got a lot of traffic when Google featured their story on the homepage in the past.

Newspapers Practicing Automated Garbitrage

The above trend is going to make the most competitive keywords even harder to rank for as there will always be at least one fresh news story about every high value topic.

• This just in...make money with the best forex platform!

• This just in...mortgage rates are at all time lows!
• This just in...online education is more affordable than you thought!

Google has already proved that they don't mind large publishers creating robotic content and building its authority with spammy links. Did you know that BizJournals offers Google searchers a credit card application service? If I posted similar content on this site Google would kill it.

Anyone Can do Public Relations

Beyond the recycled content, the movement will also be fueled by lazy underpaid writers who will heavily rely on social media and others work for story ideas. If you are good at spamming social media then the mainstream media will act as your megaphone without requiring you to hire a PR firm.

When is a Link Buy Legitimate?

Most profitable publishing enterprises are moving toward producing lower quality content. As a publisher, a brand is nothing more than something that allows you to practice arbitrage while appearing that you provide a valuable service. It allows you to get extra exposure and charge a higher rate for your ads.

The only difference between a smart strategic ad buy and a text link sale that Google wants you to report is the publisher's rate card.