After News International announced plans to charge for all of its online content by next year, The Media Blog asked 1,000 consumers how they felt about paying for content. Asked which statement they agreed with most, 44% said ‘newspapers will never successfully charge for online content, readers will simply go elsewhere.'
This seems to confirm advertisers' worst fear - that online traffic will plummet if a site switches to a subscription model. Gavin Reeder, head of digital planning at Arena BLM, said it is a given that sites will loose traffic initially, but he says: ‘There could be some good opportunities for advertisers. Clearly there needs to be a certain amount of users but a paid for site could offer more standout and bigger formats to give advertising more impact.'
Targeting is one area news sites are touting as a huge benefit if all users are made to subscribe to sites. The FT.com already uses a pay model based on frequency of use. Regular users that access more than ten articles a month have to subscribe and pay, while users viewing up to ten must subscribe, but they can first access three articles to sample the content before having to give personal data.
Jon Slade, global, online and strategic advertising sales director at FT.com, says advertisers can target readers depending on things like job title and interests. ‘People are also more engaged,' he says. ‘If a user is subscribed or paying for content, then they want to make the most of that subscription.'
Paul Constaneine, managing director at Zed Media, agrees that some people will be willing to subscribe to access content, however, he says this is more likely to be for specialist or niche content. ‘Sites like the FT offer articles with a lot of weight and insight, but it might be a harder sell if the content is widely available else where.'
Richard Hollidge, online client services director at OMD, agrees that some websites will struggle to successfully charge for mainstream content. Titles such as The Sun, which publishes a lot of celebrity news and gossip, could find it difficult to prevent its stories being very quickly replicated else where online.
The success of the internet has been born out of free content. It's clear this model is no longer working for publishers that are aiming to provide high quality content. Consumers will have to be persuaded that they are getting value for money if they are to significantly change their online behaviour. There are benefits for advertisers to gain if this can be done.