You may have recently seen in the news that the D.C. Court of Appeals made a ruling that could end net neutrality. This has the potential to have large implications for everyone who uses the Internet, but what does it mean to marketers specifically?
With this new court decision, Web properties may now have to fork over some cash to ISPs in order to have their websites or content displayed at normal speeds, or potentially even at all. Before, under the net neutrality doctrine, each ISP had to treat all websites equally.
While predicting how Internet service providers will wield this new ability is little more than speculation (this is unlikely to be this issue’s last day in court), there are some plausible scenarios which could surface. None of them seem to be very good for marketers. If ISPs decide that Facebook or Google, two of the most popular websites in the world, should pay for their popularity, then those costs could very well be passed onto marketers in the form of higher advertising costs.
ISPs may also choose to pass the cost to their consumers, creating “web packages,” similar to cable TV subscriptions. For instance, for the basic package, websites like Facebook and Google will load with regular speeds, but if you want for Netflix to get the same speed, you’ll have to pay an extra $5 a month. This could potentially diminish the audience of certain Web properties.
The truth is that this decision could have any number of implications. With the long-standing culture of the Internet serving as a free forum, it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is to ISPs who decide to implement a pay model. That provider may see users flock to its competitors, or maybe a startup or smaller company will come onto the scene exploiting this market. Only time will tell.