We recently talked to people in the industry, who said that 80% of new spending on online advertising by ad agencies went to search engines such as Google and Yahoo. That's money that's flowing directly out of the country, that isn't benefiting any of our own media services, that isn't creating jobs, and that is undermining our cultural heritage.
Let's consider the La Presse+ app model. Clearly, those who are putting their money there know what they're doing. When you read La Presse+, you see that the ads really stand out. They are interactive colour ads, and so forth.
Have you ever looked into the support that could be provided to our media services to build apps? An app provides direct access to that media source, without having to go through a search engine. And that makes all the difference.
To find out what's happening in my local news, I google “Hamilton” whatever. At the top of the page, I see the Google ads. I click on a link, and my eyes ultimately land on a media site that is displaying an advertiser's ad. Do you see what I mean? Aren't apps a way around that? La Presse's business model clearly seems to be working or, at the very least, appears quite promising.