Posts tagged News Corp
72m read their news online. Will advertisers stick around after pay walls though?
Feb 4th
Guess what? Newspapers and online media sites aren’t dead. And what does that mean, marketers will be coming back to them in droves over the next few month, but will pay walls see a decline in the numbers?
Newspaper websites in the US have attracted an average monthly unique audience of 72 million visitors in the fourth quarter of 2009, representing 37% of internet users, according to new figures from Nielsen Online.
Newspaper websites users generated more than 3.2 billion page views during the quarter, spending more than 2.4 billion minutes sites.
The results come as News Corp reports a net profit of $254m for 2009. It’s CEO – Rupert Murdoch, who is the main voice behind the push for pay walls by the year 2011 on major newspaper websites – said that “content is not just king but the emperor of all things electronic,” reassuring advertisers that consumers “will pay for content”.
So the world is going digital, this is not news. What is interesting to note though is how multiplatform the media industry has become and the variety that advertisers are now presented with.
Furthermore, with online newspaper figures so positive, it brings further confidence to the market that devices such as the Amazon Kindle and Apple’s iPad will be able to succeed.
As the economy begins to stabilize, newspaper companies are in position to leverage their trusted brands to reach a highly engaged audience and deliver maximum value to advertisers, according to Newspaper Association of America.
News Corp will be announcing within two months its model for charging for the online content of the New York Post, Times of London and all its other newspapers.
While today’s Nielsen figures sound impressively up 5.5%, it is still not known if advertisers will be willing to pay to have their ads behind paid-for content given the negative reactions from readers.
Asked what they would do if their favorite news site suddenly began charging, 74% of online news readers said they would “find another free site,” according to a Harris Interactive study commissioned by PaidContent UK. Only 5% said they’d pay to continue reading for fee.
The debate continues…
e-Readers will save the media industry and lead the ad market to recovery. Or will they?
Jan 22nd
e-Readers, Tablets and Kindles are going to save the media industry! Have you seen those headlines?
There is widespread excitement among the newspaper industry at the moment with all this hype over Apple’s upcoming ‘Tablet’ (or iSlate…or whatever). The reason is that just a few months ago people were saying that the newspaper industry was poised for failure.
It couldn’t attract advertisers due to falling circulation numbers. London’s evening free press was pretty badly hit too, those papers (London Lite and thelondonpaper) actually no longer exist. But, with the launch of these tablets and the like, the rebirth of the newspaper industry is being touted.
Suddenly, apparently, advertisers will be attracted once more to the newspaper mastheads and brands.
This seems like the silver bullet to save the industry doesn’t it? It’ll reignite good journalism and revolutionize how we consume news media. But I have my reservations.
Firstly, one report in the US said the ‘Tablet’ will cost around $999. I don’t know too many people that can afford that…they might stick to paying 20p for a copy of the Sun each morning with a side of breasts on Page 3.
Secondly, how will the ads differ from web ads?
Are they going to be interactive?
There is no doubt that January 27 will be an exciting day. But I think it’s too soon to be predicting the rebirth of the newspaper masthead.
There’s going to be pay walls next year around News Corp publications and I predict several other publishers will follow suit. So even after you do pay this $999 for a ‘Tablet’, you then also have to pay for a copy of your newspaper of choice.
It all sounds very expensive. And people have enjoyed getting the news for free for so long will they be willing to pay and to view it on a fancy reader? The reader (I’ve seen leaked pics) looks as big as a laptop…will consumers really want to lug it around all day? I for one can’t afford a bigger handbag, nor can my back.
Apple’s device is widely expected to be geared toward the publishing industry, a hub for newspaper, magazine, and book reading in addition to accessing music, games, and video. And with its App Store already a huge success, Apple will enter the market with a major advantage.
And is worth noting the success so far of Amazon’s Kindle in the US so far – it was the most popular Christmas gift last year.
When iTunes started selling music on the internet I know that the industry had its reservations about that too: “We download music for free, why would we all of a sudden pay for it?”
Perhaps I’m echoing those calls with this ‘Tablet’ business. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as excited about this gadget as most. I do however think it is a bit early to be suggesting it’s the industries savior.
Furthermore, look how long it took advertisers to get on board with social media. Will they jump aboard these e-Readers instantly? Publishers are going to have to make some interesting deals with advertisers to make them worthwhile for both the newspapers and the consumers.
Google search offers the best of both worlds for publishers. Apparently.
Dec 3rd
As the Google and Bing search war heats up, publishers are left wondering whether they should be putting up pay walls or keeping their articles in Google News and Google Search?
Well, according to Google, they can do both as the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Google has said on its blog, “There are a few ways we work with publishers to make their subscription content discoverable” as it updates one of them to remind publishers about some of their options.
The search engine giant has strict policies against what is known as cloaking – showing one web page to the crawler that indexes it but then a different page to a user.
It does this so that users aren’t deceived into clicking through to a site that’s not what they were expecting. While the anti-cloaking policies are important for users, they do create some challenges for publishers who charge for content.
Google’s “crawlers” can’t fill out a registration or payment form to see what’s behind a site’s paywall, but they need access to the information in order to index it.
One way it overcomes this is through a program called ‘First Click Free’ in which participating publishers allow the crawler to index their subscription content, then allow users who find one of those articles through Google News or Google Search to see the full page without requiring them to register or subscribe.
The user’s first click to the content is free, but when a user clicks on additional links on the site, the publisher can show a payment or registration request.
Google believes that First Click Free is a “great way for publishers to promote their content and for users to check out a news source before deciding whether to pay”.
In addition to First Click Free, it also crawls, indexes and treats as ‘free’ any preview pages – generally the headline and first few paragraphs of a story – that are made available to users. This means that Google crawlers see the exact same content that will be shown for free to a user.
Because the preview page is identical for both users and the crawlers, it’s not cloaking. It then labels such stories as ‘subscription’ in Google News. The ranking of those articles are subject to the same criteria as all sites in Google, whether paid or free. But, generally, if something has ‘subscription’ written beside it, users are less likely to click through to it.
According to Adam Bunn, Head of SEO at search marketing agency Greenlight, Google’s proposition weakens Microsoft’s hand in its struggle to improve Bing – Google’s only foreseeable challenger in the search game.
While First Click Free is designed so that newspapers can theoretically charge for their content and still benefit from Google traffic, the reality is quite different.
“What has ensued is a ‘Mexican standoff’ in which both parties claim they have no need of the other, which in the event has been broken first by Google,” explains Bunn. “First Click Free now only requires that the first five page views by Google users on any given day are free, after which sites are free to charge whatever they like.”
At the very least though, Google has signaled its willingness to compromise its previous hard line on news content. It will help to neutralize public concern over its apparent lack of care towards publishers.
Microsoft has been reported to be discussing the possibility of exclusive deals with major newspapers including the Murdoch empire. That would see Bing become the only search engine able to include those papers in its results. If Microsoft were to get enough publishers on board, that could potentially harm Google’s relevancy.
Bunn believes that Bing’s approach may be less attractive to the publishers themselves as they see the possibility of making more cash from Google following the changes to the well established First Click Free.
“Whether these changes alone will be enough to placate newspaper owners is questionable,” says Bunn. “After all, how many Google users click through to the same site, from Google, more than times times per day?”
Whatever the number, it’s almost certainly a tiny proportion of those who visit news sites at all.
Furthermore, of those who do, how many are willing to pay for their news content versus the alternative option of simply reading essentially the same story elsewhere? Again, only time will tell, and whether this will be the end or beginning of negotiations between the papers and the search engines remains to be seen.
But at the end of the day, whether you’re offering your content for free or selling it, it’s crucial that people find it.
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