Canada’s mainstream media pushed for an advertiser boycott of Meta. It seems they were the ones to come crawling back to Meta.
One of the things Canada’s mainstream media did as an act of revenge against Meta when it refused to give them free money through Canada’s link tax law was launch an advertiser boycott. The idea was that if the mainstream media pulls their advertising, Meta would get so badly hurt that they would have no choice but to give the mainstream media free money through the link taxes. The idea was extremely laughable largely in part that they don’t exactly spend enough in advertising for Meta to notice.
The advertiser boycott was a dead on arrival idea from the beginning. Every small organization that joined was paraded around as a sign that they have momentum to get Meta to come crawling back to them. Unsurprisingly, it did nothing to stop Meta from dropping news links anyway. Moreover, it did nothing to convince Meta to come “crawling back” to the “negotiating table” as they still haven’t even so much as made a sign that they have changed their mind on this.
A contingent of mainstream media voices, however, were insistent that Meta really was significantly hurt by the blocking of their news links (spoiler: they didn’t notice a difference). All they have to do is just hold out for a little while longer and Meta would knuckle under any day now. Aaaaaany day now.
Well, we decided to see how that advertising boycott was working out for the mainstream media today. Probably to the surprise of no one, the mainstream media came crawling back to Meta despite never restoring news links or offering additional compensation.
For reference, the advertiser boycott started in July of 2023. So, let’s see how long the mainstream media lasted without advertising on Meta before they continued shovelling advertising dollars to Mark Zuckerberg. According to the ad transparency reports, the Toronto Star stopped advertising in June to join the boycott. Their advertising started back up in September of 2023. So, in all, that organization’s advertising boycott lasted all of about 3 months.
If you thought that was bad, the National Post was even worse. They ran one ad in July of 2023, then proceeded to run another ad in August of 2023. So, they didn’t even bother participating in the boycott. There was a large gap that could be explained by reasons other than participating in the boycott, but they resumed advertising in September of 2024 and began advertising quite heavily.
CTV doesn’t have a history of advertising in 2023 and before, but they began advertising on Meta in October of 2024, so that outlet actually became a new revenue stream for Meta.
CTV’s parent company, Bell Media, has a sporadic history of advertising, but it doesn’t appear as though they really participated in the boycott.
Global News, for their part, doesn’t have much of a history of advertising, but actually started advertising this month after running an ad clear back in 2022.
The Globe and Mail has a major gap between January of 2023 and February of 2024. It’s unlikely this has anything to do with the boycott because that was well before the boycott was likely even thought of. Still, they began advertising heavily starting in July.
The Vancouver Sun stopped advertising in May of 2020, then resumed advertising in October of 2024 (with one ad in May). It’s unlikely the gap even has anything to do with the advertiser boycott.
The Calgary Herald stopped advertising in 2020, then resumed in 2024. Again, it’s unlikely that the gap has anything to do with the advertiser boycott.
So, if anything, Canada’s mainstream media not only didn’t last very long in the boycott (for however few participants there were), but they have started advertising like never before with outlets that have no real history of advertising with Meta in the past now advertising like crazy. All of this with Meta not even contemplating restoring news links in Canada.
The funny thing to think about is that the mainstream media is not only thrilled to have their “content” “stolen”, but are paying Meta to “steal” their “content” nice sizable sums of money as well. They really can’t help themselves, can they? Now, they wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t derive a benefit from all of this. This likely in the form of additional traffic and eyes on their content. This has long been something I, along with many other people, have pointed out since the beginning. Media companies post links to these platforms because they know they derive a benefit from them. I’ve been one of many voices that have repeatedly stated that publishers need platforms far more than platforms need publishers.
While the media sector is the ones hurting from the mainstream media’s pure greed in all of this, it seems that Meta is the one that’s counting their money.
