If you have got this far, it is because you clicked on a link. On the VIA Empresa homepage, on Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp or on a Google search result. You clicked with an implicit promise of forbidden information. Just a click and for free: harder to ignore than to click.
Before the article digital newspapers don't want you to read appeared on your screen Internet has worked its magic. On the VIA Empresa servers your click was added to other users' clicks who have already read the article, it was added to the OJD database (local audit organization), to the visit counter of Google Analytics, and to the number of times each advert has appeared on the page, here in the right sidebar.
In fact, before your joy for at finding the answer to a question you never even asked, there is that of the media outlet that sees a chance to sell more ads, that of Google, who indexes more pages in which to insert more ads and that of the advertisers as more people see their brand. More audience and more advertisers who pay for more content and so the virtuous circle cant start again.
This is the advertising model on the Internet... and on the radio, in newspapers and on television. In fact, it is advertising as usual: advertisers pay for the contents that the audience get for free. Nothing changed then? Yes, everything. In an environment of infinite informative choice the cost of choosing rises exponentially with the offer, and so does that of making a bad choice. And I am not only talking about the digital press: tweets, Netflix documentaries, videos and photos of cats on Instagram compete for the user's attention in the same arena, and the currency is the click. No click, no virtuous circle, no money.
Thus, a large part of the digital press is increasingly concerned with competing by generating hits, and every click begins with a headline that is sensationalist enough to grab our attention. It does not matter if the contents don't live up to the expectation, what counts is the click. This phenomenon is known as clickbait. In fact, it is not even new nor necessarily a bad thing –the tabloids have always done it– the problem comes when clickbait becomes the norm.
Let us do a random review of today's large digital media outlets. Without having to even search for the most explicit, I found:
- The estate properties that could end up sinking Isabel Pantoja
- Six things that successful people do before breakfast
- Censorship in music: bottoms that turn into elephants' rumps
Headlines like these are the ones we click on at one o'clock in the morning when we are still at the computer and we think: "just this one and that's it for the day." Impossible not to click.
If you want to vaccinate yourself against clickbait you can follow @savedyouaclick on Twitter, which exposes clickbait in a very creative way: it takes the misleading headlines, reproduces them on its account and responds to them directly, saving you the trouble of reading them. In their own words: "Don't click on that. I already did."
I have to confess that it took me a while to find a good title for this article for I wanted it to be the perfect clickbait example. For the record the ones discarded were:
- 10 reasons why digital media do not want you to read this article
- The article about the digital media that is setting the net on fire
- What Beyoncé does not know about the digital media
- Why cats triumph in the digital media
Before the article digital newspapers don't want you to read appeared on your screen Internet has worked its magic. On the VIA Empresa servers your click was added to other users' clicks who have already read the article, it was added to the OJD database (local audit organization), to the visit counter of Google Analytics, and to the number of times each advert has appeared on the page, here in the right sidebar.
In fact, before your joy for at finding the answer to a question you never even asked, there is that of the media outlet that sees a chance to sell more ads, that of Google, who indexes more pages in which to insert more ads and that of the advertisers as more people see their brand. More audience and more advertisers who pay for more content and so the virtuous circle cant start again.
This is the advertising model on the Internet... and on the radio, in newspapers and on television. In fact, it is advertising as usual: advertisers pay for the contents that the audience get for free. Nothing changed then? Yes, everything. In an environment of infinite informative choice the cost of choosing rises exponentially with the offer, and so does that of making a bad choice. And I am not only talking about the digital press: tweets, Netflix documentaries, videos and photos of cats on Instagram compete for the user's attention in the same arena, and the currency is the click. No click, no virtuous circle, no money.
Thus, a large part of the digital press is increasingly concerned with competing by generating hits, and every click begins with a headline that is sensationalist enough to grab our attention. It does not matter if the contents don't live up to the expectation, what counts is the click. This phenomenon is known as clickbait. In fact, it is not even new nor necessarily a bad thing –the tabloids have always done it– the problem comes when clickbait becomes the norm.
Let us do a random review of today's large digital media outlets. Without having to even search for the most explicit, I found:
- The estate properties that could end up sinking Isabel Pantoja
- Six things that successful people do before breakfast
- Censorship in music: bottoms that turn into elephants' rumps
Headlines like these are the ones we click on at one o'clock in the morning when we are still at the computer and we think: "just this one and that's it for the day." Impossible not to click.
If you want to vaccinate yourself against clickbait you can follow @savedyouaclick on Twitter, which exposes clickbait in a very creative way: it takes the misleading headlines, reproduces them on its account and responds to them directly, saving you the trouble of reading them. In their own words: "Don't click on that. I already did."
I have to confess that it took me a while to find a good title for this article for I wanted it to be the perfect clickbait example. For the record the ones discarded were:
- 10 reasons why digital media do not want you to read this article
- The article about the digital media that is setting the net on fire
- What Beyoncé does not know about the digital media
- Why cats triumph in the digital media
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