A few months back this post on Australian marketing website Mumbrella by journalism academic Stephen Quinn put the print to digital transition newspapers face into context. Despite getting 20 million unique visitors a day, Stephen Quinn said that the New York Times would only cover a fifth of its US$200 million news gathering budget through online advertising.
Actually the New York Times is doing comparatively well according to a US study out by analyst firm Outsell (via Media Buyer Planner). Outsell says that American papers only get 11% of their revenues through digital.
Compare that to trade titles and its a different story completely. Technical and medical magazines get 69.3% of their revenue from digital - in a sense they have a captive audience who have a professional need to pay, the same reason why the Wall Street Journal is successfully charging in the newspaper world.
However, even plain old b2b magazines still get a respectable 36% of income from online.
According to Outsell (quoted in b2b online), "while the wheels are coming off the industry - with six bankruptcies and massive product and job cutbacks - it remains dependent on print revenues. The news segment still stands out as the biggest laggard in the information industry overall."
Newspaper publishers like Rupert Murdoch certainly know which way the wind is blowing, with Murdoch himself admitting that digital will be the prime delivery mechanism for his newspapers with ten years. However in light of these stats, his attempts to draw an end to the age of free smacks of five to midnight desperation.
And on that note, take a look at this paid news content presentation from Steve Outing (it's a downloadable PDF)
A few slides in Steve quotes some findings from BJ Fogg of Stanford University's Persuasion Technology Lab who says that if 90% of mainstream media put up paywalls, the remaining 10% will suddenly get very popular (which is why I've thought paid content is a great opportunity for sites like BBC News and CNN).
Paid content will attract largely older readers, leaving the younger ones looking for their news elsewhere. Indeed, many already do.
- How do you escape from 'Free'? (socialmediatoday.com)
- FT.com: Murdoch considers charging for online news, developing e-reader (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
- Web + Print: A Powerful Combo (mondaynote.com)
Link to original postLink to original post
Link to original post