With The Sun and Telegraph websites moving behind subscription services later this year, the UK newspaper industry remains divided on the balance between ad-funded editorial and paid content. Last month, subscription software firm Zuora assembled key industry figures from News International, the Financial Times, IPC, Fairfax and Pearson to discuss the future of the publishing industry and the emergence of ‘Paywall 2.0’.
Panel guests:
• Christina Scott, CIO, Financial Times
• Tom Hall, VP Education Technology Partnerships, Pearson
• Neil Robinson, Digital Director, IPC Media
• Andrew Lam-Po-Tang, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Fairfax Media
• Katie Vanneck-Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, News International
• Peter Kreisky, media industry pundit and chairman of Kreisky Media Consultancy
• Tien Tzuo, CEO (former CMO / COO at Salesforce.com), Zuora
The event, held at the Bulgari Hotel London, began with Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo outlining his vision for ‘Paywall 2.0’, arguing that traditional ‘tollbooth’ style paywalls without any digital reinvention risk failure.
Tzuo asserted that publishers need to reinvent relationship with customers through a ‘digital-first’ strategy giving an experience that can’t be offered in print. By exploiting offerings effectively, publishers can unbundle content into a better value proposition, increase geographical reach, and offer compelling deeper, richer experiences.
To view Tzuo’s full presentation, see the Slideshare presentation below:
Commenting on the perception of subscriptions, Andrew Lam-Po-Tang, CIO, Fairfax Media, felt that the term ‘paywall’ was a harmful term that failed to communicate the benefits of subscription. He thought publishers need to focus on nurturing customer relationships when implementing premium services.
Fairfax Media has set a midyear deadline for the introduction of an Australian paywall for its websites of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as it trials a 10 free article “meter” and $15 a month online subscriptions for many of its overseas readers.
“We’ve seen a drastic drop in advertising revenue over the past five years. Putting a paid strategy around some of our digital content was a critical step in helping us to not only survive, but to thrive in today’s digital economy,” he added.
The Financial Times has pioneered the concept of paid news content online, and CIO Christina Scott said the title had successfully capitalised on its position as a relatively niche product in the business new sector with a highly engaged and affluent audience.
The FT.com has been has been running online subscriptions since 2001, and Scot said it “always put customers at the centre of relationships”. Total FT Group revenues were up 4% last year, with combined paid print and online circulation rising to 602,000, with digital subscriptions exceeding print circulation for the first time in 2012.
The FT site sits behind a paywall, and whilst you can try it for £1 for the first month, £9/week gets you full access to all the digital content across Web and mobile, while £10 and £12 monthly subs get you add-ons such as print copies. Scott added that the firm was now looking at boosting its social media and mobile presence, with possibilities of a Flipboard partnership on in the near future.
Meanwhile, News International has faced a different challenge, with a wide variety of news titles for different audiences.
Speaking about how the media giant approached digital, Katie Vanneck-Smith, CMO, News International, said: “Customers are happy to pay for products and services they value. Our paid content strategy is no exception.” In the UK, The Times went behind a paywall back in 2010, but The Sun is a different proposition, with early plans based around premium football content (such as a Euro 2002 premium offer) proving succesful but failing to launch a wider paid-content initiative.
However, as technology grew, The Sun developed one of the UK’s largest casual betting sites with Sun Bingo. The current move towards charging for The Sun online follows the signing of a deal that will allow it to offer Premier League football highlights and goals. The Sun has not revealed exact plans for its forthcoming pay model, but it will be introduced later this year.
Publisher Pearson also saw a huge shift in the market following the advent of digital. Tom Hall, VP Education Technology Partnerships at Pearson said he noticed how technology advances meant that its Education book competitors took in international publishers alongside rivals in the UK.
“The digital era has brought with it the opportunity for us to redefine our relationship with our customers and the developer community,” he said.
Neil Robinson, Digital Director, IPC Media said its roster of popular magazine titles faced challenge online, in convincing customers to pay for something they were previously getting for free. Robinson said the firm identified where added value could be generated by bundling content through related magazines and offering bonus products based around interests.
Peter Kreisky, media industry pundit and chairman of Kreisky Media Consultancy, looked at how, pre-internet, the media industry was run by a small group of highly influencial media moguls, but since the advent of digital publishers, the balance of power has shifted to a much wider set of industry leaders.
He added that publishers now need to expand their view of their ‘customer’, whether defined by one subscription or one page view and adjust their business model to cater for this accordingly.
“The reconstruction of the media industry started three years ago with a handful of pioneers validating the idea that people will indeed pay for high-quality content accessed across a range of devices from a trusted brand,” concluded Kreisky.
View a Guardian video outlining Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo’s opening presentation here.
Source: http://www.zuora.com/
I have been building my new besinuss without debt or any other financing, it is hard work coming from a the ground up and I am still finding it difficult at times to keep my head above water, but I know that there is no plug to be pulled. I have never believed in loans and have never had a significant one. Its the reliance on debt that has caused these problems in the first place!My besinuss will grow very slowly compared to debt financed ones, I know it. My software, while good will have to wait much longer before I release it as I am the only developer working on it and I have to make money in the meantime to keep a roof over my head, which is an expensive thing to do in the UK. I have gone without the fancy food, alcohol, car, big screen TV, DVDs etc that most of you will be used to and because of that I’m still my own boss.I weathered the first storm working for a web dev company that was also without debt thanks to selling an in-house developed site to a large corp before the crunch. It was tough but we watched other similar sized companies fall like flies around us as the banks wound them up, we got their besinuss and grew!Don’t take out loans and hang on in there, the web ain’t going nowhere!
Yes, a very good piece indeed. The photo is not nrcessaeily representative of today’s 70-year-old (I know because I’m over 70 myself), but her facial expres…
WJ – you may not realize it but the terminology of victimhood distinctions are offensive to some of us here, who may have relatives just like hedy epstein and her family. Whether you know it or not, in israel for example, people who managed to escape by the skin of their teeth just before being rounded up, or those who managed to survive in hiding – often at great peril – are sometimes also referred to as holocaust ‘survivors’ (or so refer to themselves), because the term “holocaust” is also used to describe a catastrophic event that occured over a period of time. I have heard many refer to themselves as “holocaust survivors” when they spent the period hidden, say in germany or austria (as many were). Others are considered survivors when their experience was in the slave labor camps, or even some who were whisked to relative safety by, eg, raul wallenberg. israel is right now busily blackmailing germany for more compensation for labor camp “survivors’ and/or descendents, which it then plans to pocket of course, just as it did the rest of the compensation.It is not for you to judge what survivor caste hedy may or may not belong to. She has escaped with her life, as many of her family members did not. You don’t know the peril or the compromises or the price paid along the way by her or others who helped. And I find the attitude of counting angels on a pin reprehensible.If you don’t like the term ‘survivor’, what term would you recommend? holocaust refugee? escapee? and do you expect reporters – who always look for the simplistic – to make those fine distinctions?For me, it was enough that Hedy seemed like a courageous elderly lady who spent a horrific childhood and young adulthood, and drew from that experience a moral fortitude to allow her to act as she does. Subjecting her to humiliation, as israelis – and certain friends in diaspora – do is unconscionable either way. Let’s see you do what she does at her age. I somehow doubt that many would be able to. Don’t forget that she could be spending her time taking the sun and a life of leisure in Miami as many older jewish people do. But she chose another way to spend her golden years. You should respect that.As for Wiesel, frankly he has been treated with kids gloves, survivor or not. And that is the sum total of my issue with him and the jewish community that exploits his story for hasbara purposes and as justification for rampant islamophobia and for persecuting palestinians around the clock. You know, some day, it’s the palestinians who may be called “survivors” of whatever name will take hold to describe the evil that’s been perpetrated upon them. looking for cheap onlinecar insurance with instant quote online insurance rates nj car in Chicago auto insurance company high risk
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It is interesting Robert that you joke saying ” joke around with him that if advertising falls apart due to the economic troubles that I’ll have to start charging my viewers for my videos, so the idea interests me.”Actually if you have the guts and if you really want to find out how valuable your content is do a test of an interview and have it so that people have to pay 1$ to view the content. I wonder just how much money you would make?Since I don’t know your audience size, because you don’t really share your stats with us, I would bet dinner that you wouldn’t be able to get one percent of your average daily viewership to pay a buck to see your content. And don’t use for your test an interview with Steve Jobs or Gates… it woudl skew the results.I think in today’s Internet world, people are so use to “free” and don’t want to pay for information.Oh, and I will tell you that a service you talked about a while back, SmugMug, is a great photo sharing service.After testing other photo sites, I really like SmugMug’s approach, site and corporate attitude. ONLINE CAR INS order cialis using a mastercard nj insurance auto
The first time Hedy Epstein came into my awareness was on this web site, when she was part of an anti Elie Wiesel demonstration in St. Louis. The title of the post was (Dec. 12) : “One Holocaust survivor is going to Gaza and another isn’t”. The inference of the post was clear: Hedy Epstein is the same type of Holocaust survivor as Elie Wiesel is. The only difference between the two is that Hedy Epstein is sensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians, whereas Elie Wiesel is not. Of course it later turned out that Hedy Epstein is not the same sort of survivor that Elie Wiesel is. Wiesel is an alumnus of Auschwitz and Hedy Epstein escaped Europe without being incarcerated. Certainly in the context of the Elie Wiesel versus Hedy Epstein morality contest, it certainly seemed that the term Holocaust survivor was implying that Hedy Epstein was a survivor of incarceration in a camp. Unlike sammy who learned about the Holocaust from books, I learned about the Holocaust in my community, where there were many survivors. The term survivors was most commonly used to refer to those who had been in camp. I feel as someone who is familiar with the term from my community rather than from books that my contribution to the discussion of the definition of “survivor” is relevant. I have known many people who escaped Europe by the skin of their teeth and do not refer to themselves as survivors. Hedy Epstein has every right to call herself a survivor if she so wishes. That does not change the fact that there are assumptions that a reader of the term will make that do not apply to her. The issue of what money went to Israel as a result of the Shoah is not something that I have studied sufficiently to comment upon. I do feel competent to comment upon the use of the term survivor in the post Shoah Jewish community. low interest credit card balance transfer business insurance
The Daily Kos is a very closed down sietthey have claimed I am anti-semitic for this post. They will also not allow me to comment further unless I check this box2009-12-29 13:41:12Anti-semitic commentary like that in your MSNBC diary is unacceptable at Daily Kos. This will be your only warning.I understand the above warning (posting is no longer allowed until this is acknowledged). but then they take off this comment by cyclobabe but leave the anti’semitc comment or inference by Meteor Blades. The Joos control the media, … (11+ / 0-) (this was written by Meteor Blade)Recommended by:Treg, sofia, blueoregon, zemblan, JeffW, unspeakable, Its the Supreme Court Stupid, ArtSchmart, charliehall, volleyboy1, QES…in case you’re unaware of it, Chess, is unacceptable discourse at Daily Kos. You can critique Rachel Maddow. You can critique Israeli policy in Gaza. But this anti-semitic approach to doing so is out-of-bounds. This will be your only warning.Don’t tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do and I will tell you what you believe.by Meteor Blades on Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 10:46:27 AM PST“but when on earth can we discuss the media coverage of just about anything? it seems to me that any critique of rachel maddow (and I have many for lots oif reason) leads to a downhill diary. I saw the vitriol heaped on jane hamsher here on DK and was appalled. To me it’s all part of a pattern, first you can’t say one thing (like, heaven forbid – a lobby for a foreign country that’s seems somewhat powerful, to make an understatement), then we can barely mention corporate controlled media or corporate controlled presidency and then we can hardly discuss any foreign affair from all sides (like the war-like escalation in afganistan) and finally, we cannot mention jane hamsher without a diary falling apart.To me, all censorship reeks of unintended consequences and collateral damage. Personally, I am known to be a trans-zionist (that’s my definition for my special condition) and no sooner I refer to palestinian human rights and call out the abuse heaped on the palestinians for what it – as well as the abject silence with which it is greeted by the msms – that a posse of self-appointed censors comes out in force. The same seems to be true for the Obamabots who are quick to take offense at mention of even the most glaring failures on the part of this administration, as if the word itself “failure” should bve expounged from the dictionary (except of course for the easy stuff- bashing insignificantpeople on the right).Apart from this diary (that admittedly mixed up way too many things into a bit of an unholy goulash), I see major problems with the censorship policy on DK. I understand the reasons for community policing, but it can quickly turn from caution into dictates. And may already have, in some regards.”by cylonbabe on Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 11:50:25 AM PST[ Parent ]
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