The media and marketing industry has a new industry association, with a group of digital-first publishers coming together to form the Digital Publishers Alliance (DPA).
The DPA is a not-for-profit association, which will represent over 90 Australian publications from publishers such as Broadsheet Media, Concrete Playground, Junkee Media, Mamamia and more.
Junkee’s co-founder Tim Duggan will lead the DPA, as per the Herald.
Very excited to announce the formation of the Digital Publishers Alliance today, bringing together Australia's leading digital publishers.
More details at https://t.co/mb0yY90euZ https://t.co/cqhnueVcrT
— Tim Duggan (@timduggan) September 12, 2021
The DPA lists it key reasons to exists as; providing independent publishers with a platform for support, developing the industry and promoting diversity of media voices in Australia.
While publishers will have to pay a membership fee, the DPA will also recieve funding from tech giants Google and Facebook.
Google will support the local publishers through its $US300 million Google News Initiative, which aims to work with publishers to create partnerships and develop products that can help grow their business.
The Google News Initiative differs slightly from the Google News Showcase, which launched earlier this year as a way to provide readers with access to paywalled content and pay publishers for curating news material.
The DPA also says it is finalising a deal with the Facebook Journalism Project, a similar initiative from the social media giant.
Facebook and Google’s backing of the DPA highlights how far relations between the local media industry and tech giants have come in the last 12 months.
After Google and Facebook campaigned against the government’s (then proposed) News Media Bargaining Code for much of last year.
This culminated in Facebook briefly removing the news function for Australian users in February of this year.
Both Facebook and Google have since agreed to a number of deals with local publishers, some of which are believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars per year.
