Publications will need a lift from digital
Paywalls may yet be the solution and could gain wider acceptance
A study conducted by the global pricing consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners suggests the majority of online content will be behind paywalls in the next three years. Monetising online content through subscription charges for visitors is a fact of life at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (NYT) and The Times. More than 400 newspapers are already charging.
According to the study, which polled the views of 2,700 decision makers from companies in all major industries, 90 per cent of online content would have their content charged.
Charge or not to charge has been a dilemma for publishers. But with revenues from print dropping and the mobile platform growing, who is going to pay for the bills?
Paywall is already a success at some publications — in two years of instituting a paywall, NYT has around 668,000 digital subscriptions. “It is definitely more financially stable,” said Paul Smurl, general manager for core digital products at the publication.
“The subscription business as a whole, including print and digital, has just continued to grow at a very nice clip and the digital business is much more than offsetting some of the secular declines in the print subscription business, primarily newsstand sales or single copy sales.”
Other successful examples come from the Gannet paywall; digital revenues rose 75.5 per cent. At Gannett’s local domestic publishing operations, digital revenue was up 98.4 per cent.
“The new paywall model, implemented last year, was already having a “significant impact” on Gannett’s bottomline,” said Gracia Martonre, president and CEO.
The culture of “free for all” may soon come to an end. Packaging of print and online subscriptions can be an option for media companies to optimise content offers. The key is to offer the correct price for content.
In the UAE. digital products continue to be free. Newspapers charge for print subscriptions but not for digital.
If one day publishing houses decide to charge for digital content, it will need to be in partnership with others publications.
Another idea is to have only one payment for all digital content from all newspapers and share the income. But, of course, as a reader I will prefer it free.
