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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

Conclusion: The Independent's ad sales team is a lot better at selling ads than you are?

That's definitely true. I'm completely hopeless at sales.

But I've contracted Google (via Adsense) to sell my ads. For which I pay them a ~30% commission. Conclusion: the Independent's ad sales team is a lot better at selling ads than Google's algorithms.

News papers tend not to be that profitable they are owned by people as a status symbol and a tool.

In many places owning a news paper is like owning a sports team or a gallery it's partially philanthropical.

I don't put media and philanthropy in the same sentence. The media is manipulative and self-seeking. As one example, during the last federal election, my local newspaper told me who to vote for. They glossed over the candidate's policies and honed in on popularity.

Lol, and philantropy is not "self seeking and manipulative"? Do you think all those magnates donating to libraries did it out if sheer love, or rather to make people forget their reckless and rapacious acts in other fields? And the best thing is, philantropy works great to manipulate perceptions, even better than press. BillG used to be the guy who "stole the Mac UI", "killed Netscape" and "embraced and extinguished", to the point of being lampooned on The Simpsons for being a brutal mobster. Then his Foundation happened, and now he's a shiny beacon of virtue. Same for "peeping Zuck".

Print ads sell for a lot more than web ads.

With print rapidly dying, a re-negotiation might happen.

No. The Independent's adverts are terrible. I really like some of their writers but the adverts are so terrible that I rarely go there. Have you seen the 20 gmail tricks?

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