C. 2021 - Comcast Introduces New Advertiser Standards
Comcast, c.2021 — Due to decreasing revenue levels from cable TV services, Comcast has looked for new sources of revenue from its growing Internet subscriber services. Raising rates on base subscribers is unpopular due to increased competition from 5G services and “cord cutting,” so they are looking to charge for advertiser access to their 28 million subscribers. They have begun to charge companies who host ads for popular web sites for access to their network, looking for a percentage of revenue. Ad farms who are not willing to pay are blocked.
Along with this new revenue drive, Comcast has begun a marketing effort to their subscriber base to tote this as an advantage, claiming this will bring about less advertisements and more quality ads. Comcast has introduced advertiser standards, similar to the “Television Code Seal of Good Practice” from the 60s and 70s.” Advertisers must meet these standards, which include not having clients that support fake advertisements like “girls near you want to meet you”, hate speech, discriminatory, or so-called alt-right groups.
Other industry leaders have followed Comcast’s lead with most of the major ad farms making deals, but also seeing a need to pass the additional cost on to their advertisers or paying out less to their clients.
This has had the effect of driving numerous “alternative news media” sites out of business. They’ve faced the problem of having to find ad farms that do not meet those standards since they’ve been banned by many of the ad farms for not meeting the new standards. Since those ad farms do not have access to the nation’s largest subscriber bases, they are not able to attract lucrative clients and their rates they can charge are not enough to support their business model.
Ironically these same media sites fully supported the repeal of the laws back in 2017 that would have prevented these arrangements.