Don't like media paywalls? Then product placement is what you get

This is a great post from the Atlantic, and illustrates in another way why I say the American Netizen public is dumb and shortsighted for resisting Internet paywalls on media websites.

If it's not that, at least some newspapers are going to get into product placement/branding.

The blog post linked above mentions Target getting its logo on the front page of the New Yorker. Those "overlay" ads that you and I see will become more and more and more common if you don't want to pay for online newspapers and magazines. I wouldn't be surprised if every story on a newspaper's website gets one of those by the end of the decade, if paywalls don't take off.

Fact is that overseas, circulation, vs. ad revenues, always made up a more significant part of a newspaper's revenue stream than here. With ads online continuing to spiral toward zero on revenues, paywalls or wall-to-wall product placement saturation are about the only choices there are. And, no, bloggers, whether more amateur or more professional, can't fill all the gap.

As for wire news vs local newspaper copy? If more and more AP member newspapers either disappear or cut back on wire services, then, AP online will either have to charge more to the Googles of the world or else insist on tighter control of related ads ... with product placement surely part of that.