- There's nothing like a little paywall debate to get the blood stirred up on a Sunday afternoon before Christmas, it seems. I started things off with a critical tweet about a Bloomberg story by Edmund Lee on how the New York Times paywall was working "better than anyone had guessed," which I contrasted with a post of mine about the decline in traffic to the NYT site (as measured by comScore) and what appeared to be a corresponding decline in advertising revenue -- including digital revenue, which is rising just about everywhere else.
paywall triumphalism from Bloomberg: go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012… -- ignores the fact NYT ad revenue still declining faster: gigaom.com/2012/10/26/the…- Edmund is right, of course -- he did mention this in his story, using numbers from an analyst (which of course are estimates). And so I acknowledged that "ignores" was too strong a word -- but still, his piece made it sound as though all you have to do is put up a paywall and your problems are solved, which I think is a Pollyanna sort of viewpoint.
- @edmundlee: in any case, you did mention it, and ignores is probably too strong -- but you sure downplayed the effect of that decline
- At which point, Josh Sternberg of Digiday noted that ad rates haven't gone up at the NYT, as detailed in his recent post; http://www.digiday.com/publishers/paywalls-dont-bump-ad-prices/, even though that was the assumption on the part of many paywall advocates -- that a paying audience would be worth more to advertisers.
@edmundlee @mathewi of course the interesting thing here (sorry to butt in!) is that dig ad rates have not gone up post-paywall, per NYT.
@joshsternberg @mathewi fact is CPMs are going down for everyone -- paid sites at least have stemmed those webwide declines in ad rates- At this point, I made the same point I've tried to make before about paywalls -- that they aren't a solution for everyone, and that even for those where such a strategy is working, like the NYT, they can't be the entire strategy
- @joshsternberg @edmundlee: the reason I harp on this is the impression that a paywall is *the* answer -- where is the rest of the strategy?
- .@joshsternberg @edmundlee: I'd like to see as much innovation around monetization as there is around display or design like Snow Fall
- .@edmundlee @joshsternberg: it's almost like some papers have given up on advertising and thus are doomed to be much smaller businesses
@mathewi @edmundlee @joshsternberg Not the smart ones… Out of the major newspapers companies, which do you think have given up on ads?- .@davisshaver @edmundlee @joshsternberg: I think virtually all of them have given up, in the sense that they aren't trying to improve
- Peter Kafka of All Things Digital also jumped in to confirm that the NYT says the paywall has had virtually zero effect on ad rates
.@mathewi @edmundlee @joshsternberg NYT people tell me pay wall has zero effect on cpm.- .@edmundlee @mathewi @joshsternberg to be clear: NYT says pay wall isn't keeping cpm flat - it has no impact on rates, period.
- @pkafka @edmundlee @joshsternberg: the assumption was that paying customers would be seen as more valuable -- what happened to that idea?
- Raju Narisetti of the Wall Street Journal said that one rationale for paywalls is that it allows newspapers to learn more about their readers, and thus hopefully target ads better -- which is part of why I am in favor of membership-style approaches rather than blanket paywalls.
Knowing more about readers (through pay) helps sell better, delay inevitable falling CPMs @mathewi @davisshaver @edmundlee @joshsternberg- @rajunarisetti @davisshaver @edmundlee @joshsternberg: exactly why I think a more membership/tiered approach is better than a plain wall
- @rajunarisetti @brianmoran @davisshaver @edmundlee @joshsternberg: part of my point -- how does a paywall encourage more engagement?
- I noted that the latest estimates are that the online advertising market grew by 18% in the third quarter to $9.3 billion, and yet few newspapers -- including the NYT -- have seen anything like that kind of increase. Why?
- @edmundlee @joshsternberg: relevant stat -- digital ad sales up 18 percent. how much of that growth are papers getting? adage.com/article/digita…
mathewi
Mathew Ingram
I'm a senior writer at GigaOm, a former journalist with the Globe and Mail and co-founder of the mesh conference in Toronto
Share & notify
Notify
140
