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What Do News Aggregators Do? Evidence from Google News in Spain and Germany

Author

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  • Joan Calzada

    (Department of Economics and BEAT, Universitat de Barcelona, 08034 Barcelona, Spain)

  • Ricard Gil

    (Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 2P3, Canada)

Abstract

The impact of aggregators on news outlets is ambiguous. In particular, the existing theoretical literature highlights that, although aggregators create a market expansion effect when they bring visitors to news outlets, they also generate a substitution effect if some visitors switch from the news outlets to the aggregators. Using the shutdown of the Spanish edition of Google News in December of 2014 and difference-in-differences methodology, this paper empirically examines the relevance of these two effects. We show that the shutdown of Google News in Spain decreased the number of daily visits to Spanish news outlets between 8% and 14% and that this effect was larger in outlets with fewer overall daily visits and a lower share of international visitors. We also find evidence suggesting that the shutdown decreased online advertisement revenues and advertising intensity at news outlets. We then analyze the effect of the opt-in policy adopted by the German edition of Google News in October of 2014. Although such policy did not significantly affect the daily visits of all outlets that opted out, it reduced by 8% the number of visits of the outlets controlled by the publisher Axel Springer. Our results show the existence of a net market expansion effect through which news aggregators increase consumers' awareness of news outlets' contents, thereby increasing their number of visits.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan Calzada & Ricard Gil, 2020. "What Do News Aggregators Do? Evidence from Google News in Spain and Germany," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 134-167, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:39:y:2020:i:1:p:134-167
    DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2019.1150
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    2. Bertin Martens & Luis Aguiar & Estrella Gomez Herrera & Frank Muller, 2018. "The digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2018-02, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Julia Cage & Nicolas Hervé & Marie-Luce Viaud, 2017. "The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?," Working Papers hal-03393171, HAL.
    4. Du, Kai & Song, Jinyuan, 2022. "The impact of geotargeting on household information acquisition: Evidence from a Google News redesign," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    5. Julia Schmitt & Klaus Miller & Bernd Skiera, 2021. "The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behavior," Working Papers hal-03857505, HAL.
    6. Tin Cheuk Leung & Koleman Strumpf, 2024. "Disentangling Demand and Supply of Media Bias: The Case of Newspaper Homepages," CESifo Working Paper Series 10890, CESifo.
    7. Luca Sandrini & Robert Somogyi, 2022. "News Media Bargaining Codes," Working Papers 22-06, NET Institute.
    8. Congiu, Raffaele & Sabatino, Lorien & Sapi, Geza, 2022. "The Impact of Privacy Regulation on Web Traffic: Evidence From the GDPR," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    9. Joan Calzada & Nestor Duch-Brown & Ricard Gil, 2021. "Do search engines increase concentration in media markets?," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2021/415, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    10. Tim Meyer & Anna Kerkhof & Carmelo Cennamo & Tobias Kretschmer, 2024. "Competing for attention on digital platforms: The case of news outlets," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(9), pages 1731-1790, September.
    11. Klaus M. Miller & Julia Schmitt & Bernd Skiera, 2024. "The Impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on Online Usage Behavior," Papers 2411.11589, arXiv.org.
    12. Li, Yi & Zhang, Wei & Urquhart, Andrew & Wang, Pengfei, 2022. "The role of media coverage in the bubble formation: Evidence from the Bitcoin market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    13. Kathleen T. Li, 2024. "Frontiers: A Simple Forward Difference-in-Differences Method," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 267-279, March.
    14. Selin Akca & Anita Rao, 2020. "Value of Aggregators," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(5), pages 893-922, September.
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    17. Magnusson, Evan, 2021. "Local news in Google News: a response to Fischer et al. (2020)," MPRA Paper 106431, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Bisceglia, Michele, 2023. "The unbundling of journalism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
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    20. Go, Geoffrey, 2021. "News Media, Digital Platforms and Content Sharing," Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers 23, Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers.
    21. Mantovani, Andrea & Piga, Claudio A. & Reggiani, Carlo, 2021. "Online platform price parity clauses: Evidence from the EU Booking.com case," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).

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