In 1963 JFK reminded America that education is the best way to stop tyranny and safeguard democracy. He also called out for all educated people to take their responsibility and participate. The Internet was largely founded on the idea of sharing and expanding knowledge… well that and enabling the military to kill people faster, more accurately and better. Anyway, the thirst for knowledge is presenting the media industry with a great opportunity that is largely being missed.
While Google insists that the panacea of all ad related problems of the world is to tweak an algorithm and advertisers go nuts when the algorithm fails to filter out questionable content… they’re totally overseeing one of the solutions, which is right under their noses – with audiences more than ready to embrace it: content serving education and fact!
It’s often forgotten that Wikipedia is the second largest web site on the planet. Despite the hype around fake news and propaganda, this is what the internet is largely about; thirst and need for information and knowledge. The traditional media industry has yet to embrace this in a meaningful way. There are no private financing systems in place that enables creators to put out content that is educational at scale. Advertisers are reluctant to step beyond their lifestyle safe zones. While public broadcasters like BBC and ARD are funding educational and informational program for digital distribution, they remain stuck in a world of state subsidies and sclerotic creative systems, disabling them to embrace the full potential of the fragmented, vibrant internet revolution.
All the while there are video based educational programs like Khan Academy, The Simple Club, or Numberphile that attract millions of viewers every month. There are channels like In a Nutshell, The Great War, or Veritasium where the producers create fact based programming attracting young, knowledge thirsting viewers at astonishing rates.
While the traditional and new financing forms for media have failed to support these creators, they are turning to Patreon, or Kickstarter to finance their projects – and the audience is following and supporting them. If advertisers, Google and Facebook would be a bit more daring they would invest more into such content. They have already agreed that all content is equal, but some content is more equal – deciding that the more equal content is the kind of content that advances humanity, would serve society well – to not mention making their advertising more effective.
While we wait for them to wake up… you can support Alex, the maker of the embedded video at Patreon.
ONLION 