Indian Newspaper Society Asks Google To Share 85 Per Cent Of Advertising Revenues Earned On Their Content

In a major development, the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has written to Google India pressing that the technology behemoth must pay for using the news content generated by newspapers, reports Economic Times.

In a letter addressed to Google India's country manager Sanjay Gupta, INS said that Google has recently agreed to compensate and pay the publishers in France, the European Union and in Australia.

Interestingly, INS has asserted that Google should share 85 per cent of the advertising revenues earned on their content. It has reasoned that even as advertising has been the financial backbone of the news industry, newspaper publishers are seeing their share of the advertising pie shrink in the digital space, even as Google is taking a giant share of advertising spends.

INS has also said that the newspaper publishers are also facing a very opaque advertising system as they do not get details of Google's advertising value chain. It has called on the company to ensure more transparency in the revenue reports provided to publishers.