Why The Wall Street Journal Has More To Gain From A Deal With Microsoft

He is right that for the Journal, this deal probably won’t have much of an effect on page views one way or another. Fine. The difference for them is that now they would have Bing paying them for doing absolutely nothing they were not doing before. Though they may sacrifice some page hits that come via searches for “news,” the amount they’ll make from Bing is likely to outweigh any corresponding decrease in ad revenue. Newspapers have tried tirelessly to monetize their content and Murdoch seems to close to accomplishing it. Subscriptions don’t really work and free, unfettered access has its problems as well, especially with the decline in advertising revenues that has accompanied the recent recession. In my mind, since the Journal doesn’t look like it will have to change much from what it’s already doing, it’s probably worth a shot.

For Bing, I’m inclined to agree with Mark Cuban who thinks this is a great strategy from a marketing standpoint. Let’s remember that the Journal is now the most widely circulated newspaper in the country.

Saying that you’re the only place where you can find the Journal on the internet is a pretty powerful attraction. If Bing can successfully portray itself as a broader and more comprehensive than Google in a few areas, this could be enough for it to make a dent in the search market.

What’s the worst that can happen? If it fails, the Journal will have lost some page views while the majority of Bing’s searches go back to coming from people who haven’t changed the default search in their browser.

–Kevin Todd