Is Paid-For Content Too Cool for School?
Newspaper advertising is a sticky subject.
Depending on who you talk to it's either alive and kicking or well on its way out.
Analysts and researchers hold the former opinion; newspaper owners the latter.
Rupert Murdoch (who is trying to take over all media in the UK) is famous for his stance on paid-for online content as a way to make up for falling newspaper advertising revenues.
If you want to read any Times of London and Sunday Times stories online you have to buy a subscription.
He's also launched a digital newspaper for the iPad called The Daily.
Online users were not in favour of the move towards paid-for content online, but Murdoch pushed ahead with the result that fewer people read their news online.
This is a danger faced by all newspapers that want to charge for online content.
Enders Analysis, a London-based research company, says that this kind of approach only really works for niche publications, as evidenced by the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
This is not going to deter the New York Times, however, as it presses ahead with plans to charge readers if they want to read news stories online.
According to Arthur Sulzberger, NYT chairman and publisher, the company will use a metered model similar to the one used by the Financial Times.
What this means is that readers will be allowed to view certain articles for free but will have to subscribe to see everything.
What's more, readers will also have to start paying for the newspaper's iPad and iPhone apps.
Bloomberg News cites Sulzberger, "We can no longer afford to have iPad and iPhone apps for free.
The metered model will still allow people to engage with your journalism when they are not deep loyalists, and still make ad dollars from that.
" Meanwhile, an official press release from the 21st World Newspaper Advertising Conference states that "print will continue to be a unique advantage in the advertising world for many years to come, despite rhetoric to the contrary about all things digital".
Apparently, newspapers still benefit from significant sales and advertising revenue.
But that doesn't mean that newspapers can afford to ignore digital avenues, as one of the overriding messages was to infiltrate as many formats as possible.
There are always some dissidents though, and one Conference attendee had a bit of a go at companies that bow to pressure and shift focus mainly online, which was dismissed as trying to be cool.
Depending on who you talk to it's either alive and kicking or well on its way out.
Analysts and researchers hold the former opinion; newspaper owners the latter.
Rupert Murdoch (who is trying to take over all media in the UK) is famous for his stance on paid-for online content as a way to make up for falling newspaper advertising revenues.
If you want to read any Times of London and Sunday Times stories online you have to buy a subscription.
He's also launched a digital newspaper for the iPad called The Daily.
Online users were not in favour of the move towards paid-for content online, but Murdoch pushed ahead with the result that fewer people read their news online.
This is a danger faced by all newspapers that want to charge for online content.
Enders Analysis, a London-based research company, says that this kind of approach only really works for niche publications, as evidenced by the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
This is not going to deter the New York Times, however, as it presses ahead with plans to charge readers if they want to read news stories online.
According to Arthur Sulzberger, NYT chairman and publisher, the company will use a metered model similar to the one used by the Financial Times.
What this means is that readers will be allowed to view certain articles for free but will have to subscribe to see everything.
What's more, readers will also have to start paying for the newspaper's iPad and iPhone apps.
Bloomberg News cites Sulzberger, "We can no longer afford to have iPad and iPhone apps for free.
The metered model will still allow people to engage with your journalism when they are not deep loyalists, and still make ad dollars from that.
" Meanwhile, an official press release from the 21st World Newspaper Advertising Conference states that "print will continue to be a unique advantage in the advertising world for many years to come, despite rhetoric to the contrary about all things digital".
Apparently, newspapers still benefit from significant sales and advertising revenue.
But that doesn't mean that newspapers can afford to ignore digital avenues, as one of the overriding messages was to infiltrate as many formats as possible.
There are always some dissidents though, and one Conference attendee had a bit of a go at companies that bow to pressure and shift focus mainly online, which was dismissed as trying to be cool.
Source...