Why publishers can’t bargain with Facebook and Google
It’s remarkable to me that more organisations don’t take advantage of perhaps the most powerful feature of the internet.
Open APIs provide a way to let other people use your technology via their websites. It can be like throwing open a window to your own servers. The more windows left ajar, the more people have access to whatever it is you offer.
If you’ve ever logged into a website or an app using your Facebook ID, then you’ve opened a window to Facebook code and connected to Facebook servers through that site or app. You have probably added third party ad codes on your web site. That’s a form of API, too.
Amazon is one of the most ambitious providers of APIs out there. With more than a million customers, including many website hosting companies, using Amazon web services it’s very likely that you spend a large percent of your digital day connected to an Amazon server – and you probably never know it.
APIs seemed to take a back seat when the mobile revolution went into overdrive, but announcements from Facebook, Google and Uber recently suggest the pendulum has swung back.
More like this
Google’s new mobile video format can lift publishers’ ad haul by 30 per cent
Facebook prepares for Instant Articles push in Asia
Publishers on Google’s header bidding competitor: ‘It’s no game changer’