A big thanks to Ronan for taking the newsletter reins yesterday. You were all in very safe hands.

Overnight, early data shows that publishers have seen traffic drops since Facebook cut off news in Australia, the platform’s nuclear response to the nation’s proposed law.  

• Chartbeat found Australian visits to publishers’ websites driven by Facebook fell from 5% to 15% 
• Overseas impact: traffic to Australian sites from visitors outside the country fell day-over-day by 20%
• Nielsen found that total sessions for the Current Events & Global News category fell by 16.1% 

I spoke with publishers and analysts about the consequences, intended or otherwise, of the two platforms’ very different approaches to the Australian Code, which requires platforms to pay publishers to display their content.

Check out the full piece for the details, but, you can guess that publishers are, once again, in the crosshairs. Facebook has proven that it delivers sizable traffic to publishers. Rather than staving off the ramifications of the code, this will underline that its market dominance needs a good looking at, just in time for U.S. and European regulators to sharpen their focus.

But there are notable issues with the Australian Code, like how it challenges the idea of the open web, how it fails to address the platforms’ dominant position in digital advertising and their potentially harmful algorithms. While set up to redistribute funding to ailing local media, will any of this extra money turn into hiring more journalists? We can hope!

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Lucinda

[email protected]

Dive deeper with an Adweek+ Subscription, your key to the inside scoop on the media and marketing and reporting that guide the world’s top brands. 

Physical locations in Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo will not reopen.

Total spend on the platform was $4.2 billion in 2020.

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group initiative aims for 25% of executive spots or a 25% increase by 2025.

Smart TV makers are pushing into a quickly fragmenting space.