Safari Reader: Apple’s Weapon of Mass Destruction
Steve Jobs gave his usual keynote address at WWDC today. The iPhone took center stage, as expected. But there was another announcement that web publishers should take note of and should dread: Safari 5.
The release of Safari 5 does not bode well for web publishers. Specifically, the inclusion of a feature called “Safari Reader” may ultimately prove financially devastating for many web publishers.
Here’s how Apple describes it on their site:
“Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story. It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.”
I highlighted the two worst parts of the description:
1. No ads.
2. Multi-page articles are now essentially one page.
The End of the Web Advertising Business Model?
This is absolutely disastrous for web publishers! As if people using ad-blocker extensions in Firefox isn’t bad enough, now Apple has made it so that an extension isn’t even necessary. Now the ad blocker is built into the browser and, to add insult to injury, users don’t even need to click to view multi-page articles.
Why are multi-page articles so important? Many web publishers get paid based on the number of ad impressions they generate (usually it’s cost per thousand ad impressions). This means that long articles are broken up into multiple pages so that a certain number of ad impressions can be generated per page view. Safari Reader only loads the ads on the first page of an article. The ads found on subsequent pages do not load in Safari Reader, only the content of the article loads.
Safari Reader attacks the ability of publisher's to monetize their content.
Apple has essentially destroyed the web publishing model completely with the release of Safari 5. This is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on the entire web economy. It’s a weapon of potential mass destruction for web publishers. Publishers now have absolutely no control over how their content is displayed in a browser and if the content can even be monetized in a significant way or not.
(82 votes, average: 1.67 out of 5)
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What about Readability? http://bit.ly/Dpnsv
Save for the need to install the bookmarklet, it does pretty much the same thing. This is a very useful tool for reading lots of text. Clearing all the “clutter” enhances comprehension. Glad to see this in Safari 5. I don’t think it will kill online advertising as every page load will still be complete (unless you have Firefox Ad Block and NoScript).
Hi David,
Publishers will get ad impressions for the first page only. The rest of the pages in multipage articles do not load ads. Publishers will lose those ad impressions. So Safari Reader is an attack on the ability of publishers to generate revenue for their content.
Articles are broken up into multiple pages to generate a certain number of ad impressions per page view. This is how sites monetize their content. It’s how they pay the bills, pay employee benefits, taxes, buy computer equipment, etc.
Safari Reader is going to cut into site revenues in a big way, particularly if the feature is cloned into Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and other browsers.
I’m kind of “whatever” about all this. Salon has truly annoying ads that attack you even if you use Adblock Plus. Smart publishers and advertisers will find easy ways to bypass this protection scheme, too.
I think this advert… UHHH website… is the reason why Safari Reader was created in the first place. You have adverts everywhere, and you wonder why people would possibly ever want to read your website without adverts? I can’t think why… Then you have to go to 2 extra pages, filled with yet more ads, just to be able to read the full article.
Wow!
Let me guess though, once iAds is completely integrated, Safari Reader will still display those advertisements…
Heh, heh. Good point, Ben.
I doubt very much that Apple will cut its own throat by allowing an ad blocking app to be developed for iPhone that would remove iAds. A developer would probably have a chance in hell of getting something like that through Apple’s draconian app review process.
Sorry you don’t like my site, David. Nobody forced you to come and read my article. And no other publisher is forcing you to visit their site to read their content. It’s entirely voluntary on your part.
As I noted in the page I put up about Ads & Ad Blockers, I rely on my blogs for money to cover expenses such as rent, food, etc. Writing for the sheer love of it is a wonderful, romantic notion. But it’s not very practical when it comes time to pay the bills. Thus the advertising on my site.
Please see the Ads & Ad Blockers page for an explanation of how the ads are set up on my blogs.
David wrote:
Jim, what is dying here is the idea that we all can consume sophisticated digital products for free because someone else will pay for them.
The advertising variant of that idea is dying as audiences fragment and investors tire of bloated (but tax-deductible?) advertising budgets with no clear connection to product visibility, sales or net profits.
The New York Times followed the advertising model for its web-site as did most newspapers. The Wall Street Journal chose a subscription model. It seems to me the outcome of that experiment is clear enough.
Will we have to pay for our megabytes/Gigabytes of downloads? Absolutely. This may shock people tying up servers with Movie downloads but they have no “right” to free downloads.
Will more web-sites have to compete for subscribers? Absolutely.
I am a retiree on a limited budget. Will all of this force me to make different (and sometimes very difficult) choices in how I use the internet? Absolutely.
Absent a public subsidy will this have a different impact across different income levels? Absolutely.
If you are right and Apple’s strategy really is a harbinger of the future then much will change and we can all debate how good or bad that is.
One thing is clear. We have a deeply ingrained idea that we are going to consume costly public and private goods and services that “somebody else” will pay for. Call it the “advertising” or the “deficit” model as you prefer.
It does not work. Change is coming. I don’t like it any more than you do but I suspect we both are going to have to deal with it.
Yeah, having a ton of ads on your site is the only way to make a living writing.
Hi Julian,
Good points about the WSJ and NY Times. But remember that the WSJ also has ads and some of its content is available without a subscription.
Safari Reader would not be so bad if Apple had allowed users to white-list sites so that ads loaded in the Reader view. Or if the default had been for ads to load but no other parts of the page (except the content).
I can’t figure out if Apple was simply too stupid to think this through or if they did it deliberately to go after Google. If it’s an attack on Google’s advertising business then it’s an extremely nasty one. Can you imagine if Microsoft had done something like this? All hell would be breaking loose and a lot of Apple fans would be screaming about how “evil” Microsoft is, and how the government should do something about it.