The Times paywalls go up...
Discussion
I gave up reading the site when they introduced the free trial walls. I don't as a rule buy the newspaper, but thought their internet site is better than the telegraph, for example. When you live abroad and want some news from home then some papers do it better than others... It was my understanding that the subscription works on a yearly fee, rather than a visit fee - no good for me as I don't buy a paper every day (and didn't for that matter visit the webpage every day).
itsnotarace said:
I have a feeling that many other content providers are watching the way The Times PPV model plays out. I certainly won't be signing up though, which is a shame as Timesonline was pretty good compared to others
Yup. I have to read the Torygraph and also the Guardian to get some kind of balance on an article.To be honest, even if they all went to ppv I would find it more pleasurable to not read any of them. Life would probably be much more pleasureable without the daily misery pumped out by modern media.
zac510 said:
Funk said:
advertisers won't be willing to pay massive sums to advertise to 10% of the users they were reaching before.
The advertisers will have access to a much more direct and relevant set of readers rather than a bunch of randoms linked in from blogs or twitter that they're paying to give impressions to (as you know this in turn means low click through rate).As all readers of The Times website will be registered there will be information there for demographic/behavioural marketing too, inceasing the chance of the ad actually being relevant to the reader.
So ad revenue WILL decline; and by significant margins.
Edited by Funk on Friday 18th June 15:47
But they will have better demographics data as well as the power to track user accounts, effectively re-target ads, provide more relevant ads. So they will be able to command higher prices. However this will need to be used very carefully, too many ads and too much perceived privacy intrusion might turn people off.
The biggest issue I see with the paywall model is attracting new customers. Sure they might get 150k people today from the existing readers but how to you entice more people? How do you replace people who stop reading?
At least with physical newspapers you can walk past and see the headlines or flick through an article. Perhaps read someone else's on the train or in the coffee room at work.
The biggest issue I see with the paywall model is attracting new customers. Sure they might get 150k people today from the existing readers but how to you entice more people? How do you replace people who stop reading?
At least with physical newspapers you can walk past and see the headlines or flick through an article. Perhaps read someone else's on the train or in the coffee room at work.
Edited by CoopR on Friday 18th June 15:27
Gaz. said:
Funk said:
Gaz. said:
Quite simply because 150,000 x £2 is more than 1,200,000 x £0.
It isn't 1,200,000 x £0.It was estimated that timesonline drew in ad revenue of £15-18m a year. 150,000 users paying £2/week equates to £15.6m. Sure, there will be some ad revenue from that, but advertisers won't be willing to pay massive sums to advertise to 10% of the users they were reaching before. It might be reasonable to assume ad revenue will fall in line with usage, so to perhaps £1.5-1.8m per year.
Either way, it looks like an extremely risky strategy to simply move the income from advertisers to readers.
If only 4% of the users decide to cough up, things look decidedly worse..
I think we'll see The Times fail.
10JH said:
Funk said:
It was estimated that timesonline drew in ad revenue of £15-18m a year. 150,000 users paying £2/week equates to £15.6m. Sure, there will be some ad revenue from that, but advertisers won't be willing to pay massive sums to advertise to 10% of the users they were reaching before. It might be reasonable to assume ad revenue will fall in line with usage, so to perhaps £1.5-1.8m per year.
Any idea how many adverts are they showing? The ad CPMs may rise if they think the paying audience is more valuable.Wonder how much they earnt in affiliate marketing, they seemed to have quite a few affiliate partners.
Murdoch isn't risking all by swapping £15m in ad revenue to £15m in ppv revenue. He's risking all because the ad revenue is not covering the costs of the business in the slightest and he needs to find a new model that pays.
Why go to an expensive to run ppv model, when you can run a few accounts through ad brokers and get the same revenue?
tinman0 said:
10JH said:
Funk said:
It was estimated that timesonline drew in ad revenue of £15-18m a year. 150,000 users paying £2/week equates to £15.6m. Sure, there will be some ad revenue from that, but advertisers won't be willing to pay massive sums to advertise to 10% of the users they were reaching before. It might be reasonable to assume ad revenue will fall in line with usage, so to perhaps £1.5-1.8m per year.
Any idea how many adverts are they showing? The ad CPMs may rise if they think the paying audience is more valuable.Wonder how much they earnt in affiliate marketing, they seemed to have quite a few affiliate partners.
Murdoch isn't risking all by swapping £15m in ad revenue to £15m in ppv revenue. He's risking all because the ad revenue is not covering the costs of the business in the slightest and he needs to find a new model that pays.
Why go to an expensive to run ppv model, when you can run a few accounts through ad brokers and get the same revenue?
He thinks Google is 'stealing' his news, when in fact Google are actually driving more traffic to his site.
For all its faults as a paper, the Daily Mail are pushing the reasons why they're staying free:
Bullishness:-
* Half of Mail Online traffic is direct hits.
* “Digital-only display ad revenues for MailOnline are currently up 131% year on year for financial ytd.”
* Mail Online publisher Martin Clarke says he’s “gunning for the portals” and “attacking portals like MSN and Yahoo”.
* Why the site is celeb-heavy: “Choice of content is heavily influenced by real-time minute-to-minute monitoring of reader activity – while preserving core brand values.”
* Site’s readers are “MidBritons to a man and woman” - “a younger, richer version of the people who read our papers”.
On charging:-
* ”Readers will not pay to consume general news on the web.”
* “All news has traditionally been free – EXCEPT print.”
* ”People pay for the convenience of print in recognition of the special cost of production and delivery of a tangible product and because they purchase it WHOLE.”
* “Which is why they will also pay for news on mobile devices.”
* “And we will also experiment with niche paid-for web content.”
Staying free:-
* ”Like it or not, the web is free with one or two players in each sector becoming big winners.”
* “MailOnline – uniquely among UK newspaper sites - is now big enough to make the advertising model pay.”
* “Staying free also allows us to expand our news brand internationally.”
* “And protect and promote our group’s paid-for products and services.”
* ”A pay-wall MIGHT make a little money – we will make a lot.”
Pushing to print:-
* Web begets print - “78% of UK MailOnline audience do NOT buy Mail newspapers, but are exactly the kind of people who SHOULD.”
* “Mail readers who also use our website buy TWICE as many copies of the paper.”
* There’s a “focus on converting new customers to paid-for products in print and on mobile devices”.
Paper sales:-
* Mail Newspapers made about £11 million from cruise adverts in 08/09.
* Sainsbury’s sells 27 percent of all Daily Mail/Mail On Sunday copies.
* Mail circulation revenue has been growing for the last decade.
* The Mail’s circulation is falling slower than the rest of the market.
Diversified income:-
* The MailLife retail affiliate brand earned £21 million turnover at half-year - £4.7 million revenue for A&N.
* Customers used it to buy 566,000 products in 08/09, spending £31 million - it sold £3.6 million worth in wine alone.
* A&N Media says it has a database of 13.7 million contactable customers.
* Now A&N wants to connect up its whole consumer portfolio, including Metro and Loot, in this way.
Interesting stuff.
Funk said:
The problem with Murdoch is that it actually appears that he hasn't understood how Google and newsfeeds actually work.
He thinks Google is 'stealing' his news, when in fact Google are actually driving more traffic to his site.
Bit short on time to read the whole of your post - however - traffic does not mean cash as random web traffic is absolutely worthless. He thinks Google is 'stealing' his news, when in fact Google are actually driving more traffic to his site.
Murdoch doesn't want to be controlled by Google for his revenue stream either - and I don't blame him.
Ozone said:
Halb said:
Galsia said:
If I was paying for news, I sure as hell wouldn't expect to see any ads on the site...
Quite. It's either free with ads, or not free without ads.I have sky because I want the content that I cannot get elsewhere (and also the format I like). I endure the adverts but with skyplus (which I now use all ze time) I just skim thru them.
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