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About Cookies and AI

By Michael Ricci
May 17, 2024
1,864 Views

Emerging technologies have always presented opportunities as well as challenges to All About Jazz. The staying power formula (online) is about maintaining relevancy and traffic. We have more than held our own for nearly 30 years, which is no mean feat, but it guarantees nothing. Our mindset is to improve and expand (AAJ) every day. And though most are pulling for us, there are some realities that you should understand, so please read on.

Cookies and AI

All About Jazz generates revenue from Google ads, fund drive donations and our promotional services. We rarely receive traditional industry support (e.g. the kind of ads you see in print). If you keep current with the web, you've probably heard that third-party (browser) cookies will be permanently phased out in October 2024. Cookies enable advertisers to personalize ads based on a user's browsing history, interests, and demographics, making ads more targeted, and targeted ads are more profitable to publishers like AAJ. Without targeted ads, we are told to expect a significant drop in ad revenue. To what extent is still unknown, but it is a concern. Only time will tell how it plays out and I will keep you posted along the way. All About Jazz is a Raptive partner site and they are working diligently to mitigate loss.

Raptive also keeps AAJ abreast of Generative AI developments. As a techie, I can't help but marvel at what is happening with artificial intelligence. What you should also know is that AI bots (e.g. used by ChatGPT and Google) crawl websites to gather content for generative AI platforms to use in formulating their responses to queries. All About Jazz was one of those sites and so they were using All About Jazz content (which is copyrighted) without our permission and they are benefiting from it, and in some instances, monetarily. We started by blocking GPT bot, but we recently learned that other bots were crawling our site (including Google), so we're blocking them too. Unfortunately, they've captured our past content, but at least we can block them moving forward.

All of this is to say that producing a jazz music website is a tremendous challenge and on many fronts. Margins are thin, but I can say with all certainty that AAJ plays an essential role in today's jazz ecosystem. We are committed to building on what we started in 1995 and we hope to continue on for many years to come. So, we'd like to ask two favors: first, sign this letter which is intended to protect All About Jazz's content in the age of AI. Raptive represents thousands of smaller publishers like AAJ and is lobbying Congress on our behalf. Signatures count, so if you value All About Jazz & Jazz Near You, please sign it. A financial donation or purchasing a promotional service is also welcome. Advertising at All About Jazz is a smart move: our reach and readership are tops and our rates remain highly affordable.

Posted to Publisher's Desk IN THE All About Jazz GROUP
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