Photo/Illutration The Fair Trade Commission, headquartered in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, has recently tried to crack down on companies that force subcontractors to store equipment without paying. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Major digital news distribution platforms such as Yahoo Japan News may be abusing their dominant negotiating positions at the expense of media organizations, the Fair Trade Commission reported on Sept. 21.

The FTC warned in a report that if such news distribution platforms kept the rates they paid media organizations for page views inappropriately low, the platforms could be found in violation of the Anti-Monopoly Law.

It recommended that news distribution platforms enter into more sufficient negotiations with media organizations by disclosing the process by which they determine the prices they pay them.

Since November 2022, the FTC has sent questionnaires to about 220 newspaper and publishing companies, along with 2,000 consumers. The commission also interviewed officials at seven major companies that operate digital news portals or search engine platforms.

Based on the total amount media organizations received, the market shares of the companies were determined to be between 40 and 50 percent for Yahoo Japan News, 20 to 30 percent for LINE News and 10 to 20 percent for the aggregator company SmartNews.

Yahoo Japan News was the largest business partner for about 60 percent of the media organizations, and about 20 percent of the consumers surveyed said they used that platform the most.

The FTC report said Yahoo Japan News held a dominant negotiation position because of such ties to media organizations and consumers.

Media organizations had long complained that individual contracts with the news distribution platforms kept the prices they received low because they had no idea what the proper price levels were and that there were few opportunities to negotiate for higher prices.

The FTC report for the first time listed the average prices six of the news distribution platforms paid to media organizations. While the average price paid was 124 yen (84 cents) per 1,000 page views, there was a fivefold gap between media organizations, with those receiving the highest average price getting 251 yen per 1,000 page views, while the lowest average was 49 yen.

The amount that media organizations received from news distribution platforms was only about one-third of the advertising revenues generated from their own websites.

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