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Study: Stolen Web Content Sees More Traffic Than The Original

Posted: November 13, 2008

Newspapers struggling to find an online life may not like the sound of this: When it comes to mainstream media sites, far more people read unauthorized online copies of stories than read the originals, according to some interesting new research being released today.

The study indicates content illegally republished on third-party sites gets two-and-a-half times the traffic, on average, that the original and official version does. The most extreme cases, it says, happen in stories about cars, travel, and movies. Dupes of those sorts of stories were found to get as much as seven times the traffic as the originals.

The report (PDF), conducted by Attributor Corp., suggests online publishers are losing out, on average, on $150,000 in ad revenue from those unauthorized online copies. Some bigger Web publishers could stand to lose as much as $1 million a year, it claims.

So can publishers really take advantage of this information, or is it just a reminder of how much they’re getting screwed? The obvious implication is stepping up copyright enforcement, and it’s worth noting that Attributor — the group that did the study — is a copyright enforcement company, so it may have had its own reasons for doing this research. (The company sells software that hunts down copyright violations on the Web.)

Attributor also suggests the idea that companies could “figure out a way to mine advertising revenue” from these stolen copies. It’s a nice concept, sure, but I don’t know that the sort of blogs that are outright stealing content will be open to the idea of an external company placing ads on their pages.

If someone can figure out a way to make that happen, though, they’ll be not only a millionaire — but also could be credited as being the genius who gave struggling mainstream media companies a new lease on life. Think it’ll happen?



Comments


4 Archived Responses to “ Study: Stolen Web Content Sees More Traffic Than The Original ”

  1. richiepear
    Nov 13, 2008

    Great point on blogs (disclaimer that I work for Attributor) – one of the new solutions we're proposing is for publishers to work directly with the ad networks and share in revenue made by others. The concept is that publishers should set their content free and be able to share in the revenue that others make from it.

  2. JohnMcDonald
    Nov 13, 2008

    Something smells funny to me, and not just because of the obvious conflict of interest involved. Google is pretty smart about identifying an original vs. the copy, so if a publisher is having a hard time with knockoffs they might just need to hire an SEO or pay up a bit to get their content writers and designers up to speed on search engine best practices.

    Or, are we just talking about excerpts? Short quotes? If its sourced with a proper link, it could have value if someone reads a short quote from a third-party website: it helps establish the originator as an authority.

    Maybe its all going on where I wasn't paying attention (cars, movies, travel lol) but I'd like to hear some details about exactly what content counts for the purpose of this study. ie: Is a social bookmark on Digg that uses the same headline and a 250 character excerpt counted as an “unauthorized” copy even though it could send surges of traffic to the originator? AP seems to think so, so I wouldn't be surprised if the threshold here was set really, really low…

  3. JohnMcDonald
    Nov 14, 2008

    Thanks for clarifying that, sounds like a pretty reasonable calculation… I have been hearing a few more complaints lately and certain sites in particular. I'm still kind of surprised but there is a lot more off-search engine traffic these days so maybe I should be recalculating my own view instead.

  4. Rich Pearson
    Nov 15, 2008

    We definitely could have explained this better as it came out a bit skewed. We're trying to enable open syndication in which content creators let their content proliferate through viral or other means and collect a share of the revenue as it gets monetized.

    Lots of hairy questions about what qualifies for payment, but all the information is there. I think everyone realizes the whack-a-mole strategy won't work, and it's time to try something new.