Paywall for videos would let readers watch a little, then ask them to pay

Press+, which helps publishers erect paywalls on their sites, has launched a new tool that will do the same thing for the increasingly numerous of videos magazines are posting. While the Press+ paywalls let people read a set number of articles before payment is required, the video metering system allows users to watch a few minutes before they're asked to pay. So far, most publishers are simply providing video free to drive site traffic, but more and more are looking for ways to gain incremental revenue. Essentially, they are finding that ads are not enough. 

"Press+ cofounder Steve Brill told The Wrap that the videos likely to work best for this are longer ones “with some kind of narrative arc” and that “the way to get people into video stories is to let them watch it for a little while.”

New 'soft' approach lets readers pay for access with attention to advertiser's videos

A new approach to paywalls is a "soft" approach whereby publishers give access providing the a story on AdAge, the system is called Content Unlock, from Genesis Media and is being tried out by such titles as Maxim, Guitar World and USA Today. Essentially, instead of giving their credit card number, readers pay with their attention to an advertiser's video. 

The idea is also to squeeze more revenue from readers without actually asking them to pay. "We act as a soft pay wall, which allows users to pay for content and services in a smart way -- with their attention to targeted brand experiences and videos vs. their credit card," said Mark Yackanich, CEO at Genesis Media, a New York-based startup founded in late 2011. "In effect, the brands become sponsors for a readers content consumption, in a very direct and memorable way."

It is also a way to get around readers' "banner blindness" and allows the publisher to decide what to give the reader in exchange for his or her time.

If a person watches a 15 second video, for example, he or she might have access to five free articles or get 24 hours access to a site (as in the illustrated example).

"Right now we're working in conjunction with the publishers to make this determination," said Mr. Yackanich, a former NBC executive. "But as we continue to systematize the platform, this sort of value exchange is something that we're investing and defining at the programmatic level based on an individual and their value."

Folio:, the website for magazine professionals, to charge $69.95 a year for access

Folio:, the valuable U.S. website for magazine professionals, is immediately launching a fairly tough paywall. Editor Bill Mickey outlined how the paid access model will work in a note to hitherto unpaid online subscribers.

Here's the way it will work: Each month, you'll get to read eight stories on a complementary basis. You'll be reminded as you get closer to the eighth report. After that, you'll be given the option of buying an annual subscription to Foliomag.com for $69.95. Alternatively, you can gain full access to the site on a monthly basis for $14.95.

As a leader of the digital-content marketplace, we need to adapt to the changing times. Our new format allows you, our most loyal customers, to choose the level of information you need.

Google lets publishers avoid paywalls with pay for microsurveys

The spreading net of Google is now offering publishers an alternative to a paywall with Google Consumer Surveys. According to a story on paidContent, it amounts to a reader getting free digital access (i.e. no paywall) in return for filling out a microsurvey. The publisher gets 5 cents for every survey response. In effect, the customer gets access to an article that would normally be blocked by a paywall in return for answering a question or two. 

Google already has a paid content product, Google One Pass, that lets publishers sell digital subscriptions, but Google Consumer Surveys is different because it doesn’t require customers to purchase subscriptions or log in.

Google says it has 20 publishers signed up so far. It can afford to pay publishers because advertisers and small business pays it a minimum of $100 for running a question, or about 10 cents per response.More detailed analysis can cost upwards of 50 cents per response. So Google gets it three ways -- ad exposures, paid by publishers and paid by advertisers and small business.

 “This is market research that is self-serve but has the same qualities of a high-end platform,” said Paul McDonald, product manager.

The New York Times thinks it is zeroing in on the paywall sweetspot -- 10 free articles a month

Much Twittering and other commenting about the New York Times cutting in half the free articles ahead of its paywall (to be 10 rather than 20).  Canada takes it in the ear right away; everyone else March 28. All articles, galleries, multimedia and blogs count towards the limit and freebie search engine clicks will be limited to five a day. The Times said:

We think 10 articles a month, plus free access to our home page, strikes a better balance between visiting and subscribing. Most of our readers will continue to enjoy their Times experience without interruption. At the same time, the change provides us with an opportunity to convince another segment of our audience that what The Times has to offer is worth paying for.

 The NYT concurrently announced that it has reached 454,000 paid subscribers to its digital products,and the paper said that the number of non-paid subscribers who have turned over between 10 and 20 pages is relatively small. Other data from other suppliers suggests that the paywall sweet spot can safely be set lower than papers had previously been willing to do -- somewhere between 4 and 9 a month.
The nytimes.com site had about 48 million unique visitors worldwide in January. 

The Times is selling its cheapest online plan (all you can read) for $15 a month.Compare this with the Wall Street Journal at $8. Whether the price point is inexpensive enough and the perceived value high enough to convince regular visitors to ante up is an open question. Probably, it is.
Steven Brill, who runs RR Donnelley's Press+ metered access solution for newspapers, was quoted by Poynter.org saying that maybe 1% of readers will "hit the meter" and 20% will pay. A metered system that takes such facts into account means that publishers don't have to make a hard-edged choice between free and fully paid access. Brill says the sweet spot can be defined as where readers "are not angry, not surprised" about being asked to pay. 

There is a significant difference between the NYT and a mid-sized consumer magazine, however, and nobody should take this as a license to reinforce their paywall just yet.

R. R. Donnelly buys JournalismOnline and its Press+ metered paid content model

U.S. printing giant R. R. Donnelly has made a strategic move by buying JournalismOnline's content project and, with it, the Press+ technology that allows publishers to create flexible pay models for digital content, according to a story in minonline. Stephen Brill, who had founded American Lawyer and Court TV and later Brill's Content before founding JournalismOnline, has been a champion of metered paid access as a revenue stream for newsapepr and magazine partners; it claims 1,600 affiliates for the platform. Brill's partner in the venture had been former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, who said in a statement:

“The scalable Press+ model enables publishers to quickly test and implement a variety of content distribution strategies. Our experience demonstrates that publishers using Press+ for metered access to web sites and other digital products retain their online ad revenue and readership while adding a valuable revenue stream from online subscriptions.”

R. R. Donnelley's CEO and president Thomas J. Quinlan III said 

“Press+ enhances our offering and opens new avenues for publishers to generate incremental subscription and advertising revenue.”

We can live with the new Apple subscription model, says Transcon CEO

Apparently, a 30% subscription commission taken by iTunes, while steep, is something that the CEO of Transcontinental Inc., Francois Olivier says his company can live with, according to what he told the Montreal Gazette. Transcontinental Media publishes the largest number of consumer magazines in Canada. The new sub model will help newspapers and magazines  make money, Olivier says.

Apple this week announced a new subscription model that will allow the sale of daily, weekly or monthly subscriptions whereas the previous iteration made subscribers buy each issue of any publication separately.

“That was one of the things that was missing in the Apple model,” Olivier said. “It was used to selling songs on iTunes piece by piece, but in the newspaper and magazine industry, the bulk of our readers are subscribing to the publications.”

Olivier said he doesn’t mind the 30 per cent cut that Apple will take off the top of any subscriptions, which has been criticized by other industry leaders as too steep. “When we sell magazines through news stands, the stores often take more than that, so it doesn’t feel like a totally unreasonable number.”

According to Advertising Age writer Nat Ives, however, many U.S. magazines are still  staying away from Apple's new iPad subscription system to protest the fact that Apple won't tell them who's subscribing through the App Store unless subscribers specifically say they can.

"Without the demographics, which iTunes won't release, the print world is castrated," said Gary Armstrong, the former Wenner Media executive who is now consulting on branded content development for media brands.That means the iPad won't help the magazine business as much as many publishers fantasized, Mr. Armstrong said. "Is it a complete failure?" he said. "No, but it's obvious it will now never be the panacea they long hoped for, and they'll have to readjust their entire business model."

Waiting and seeing may be the wisest course for publishers, since already there is competitive pressure on price that can only increase over the next few months. Google's announcement this week of a competing tablet sub system with only a 10% fee is the first of what could be many. According to the Wall Street Journal

Google said it will charge publishers 10% of revenue from sales through its One Pass service. It will let publishers set prices and give them more control over customer data.

"The publisher is the merchant of record," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in Berlin on Wednesday. "We don't prevent you from knowing, if you're a publisher, who your customers are, like some other people" do, he said, a tacit reference to Apple.

 James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said in the story that some publishers might sign up for the Google service purely to show Apple they aren't happy and to encourage competition. 

NYT said to be readying a charge of less than $20 a month for full online access

Though publishers continue to thrash around trying to determine what readers will put up with and pay up for content, there are some glimmers of a protocol emerging. This is illustrated by Bloomberg's report, quoting "a person familiar with the matter" that the New York Times will be charging readers less than $20 a month for access to its full web version. 

The price has been set at less than the $19.99 that customers pay for a New York Times subscription on Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle reader, said the person, who declined to be identified because the price hasn’t been made public yet. Last month, Scott Heekin-Canedy, president of the New York Times, said the price would be comparable to the Kindle subscription.

Times Co. and other newspaper publishers are trying to determine how much of their online content should remain free, how much can be moved behind a paywall, and how much to charge for access. The companies are seeking new revenue sources as print advertising and circulation revenue decline amid competition from Internet publications.

Yes, people will pay for online access, but how many? Turns out, not many

There's been precious little data to back up publishers' contention that putting up paywalls on their websites will separate the serious readers from the cheapskate rabble. Well, now there is some data in, from News Corp's Times and Sunday Times and, according to a post on Gigaom, the results are not pretty.

Essentially, the two papers which had 3 million unique online visitors a month before the paywall went up have managed to convince 50,000 people to pay to subscribe online, not counting the 100,000 or so who are print subscribers who get the service free. Those 50,000 who are paying represent not quite 1.7% of the previous measured online audience.

News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks, meanwhile, said that the company was pleased with the results, and that “each of our digital subscribers is more engaged and more valuable to us than very many unique users of the previous model.”

Pay if necessary, but don't necessarily pay

Recently it was announced that the New York Times was going to charge visitors for access to its website, starting next January. However, a story in MediaDailyNews reports that 

Executive Editor Bill Keller of The New York Times said most readers of the paper's site won't be charged with access, reports Media Matters. The newspaper's new pay model launches next January. "Those who mainly come to the Web site via search engines or links from blogs, and those who only come sporadically -- in short, the bulk of our traffic -- may never be asked to pay at all," Keller told MM. "People who have print subscriptions will get full website access without charge. So we do not anticipate a major impact on overall traffic, which is important to maintain advertising."

Quote, unquote: Getting paid access right

"We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."

-- Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the New York Times, on the announcement that the paper will charge for online access to its content starting in 2011. After accessing a certain number of articles free, readers will be asked to pay a flat acess fee. No price was announced.

Publications lining up with Journalism Online system

Pooh-poohed as it was at the start, Journalism Online, the system for helping newspaper, magazine and online publishers to make money from their content, seems to be catching on. More than 170 daily papers have signed on and more than 500 publications in total have agreed to join, representing more than 90 million unique monthly visitors.

The company was created by several partners, including co-founder Stephen Brill, and allows affiliates to set their own pay models, including sampling, micropayments, the ability to turn pay walls on and off and so on. It says one of its unique attractions is that readers can establish a single account to access multiple publications and platforms (whether they will -- or should -- do that is the crux of critics' complaints about such a system.)

Brill says: "By creating a platform of flexible hybrid models for paid content that maximizes online advertising revenue while creating a new revenue stream from readers, Journalism Online has helped shift the debate over charging for online new from 'if' to 'when and how.'"

Brill added that many publishers have moved past the "abstract debate" and are now working toward some kind of paid content model. The executives of Journalism Online figure that by focusing on 10% on avid readers, on average a Web site would keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue if it put in place a paid-content strategy.

Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of Journalism Online, said that he noticed a change in thinking among content providers over the past several months. "Every publisher we have met with is now seeking to generate revenues for online access, which is a huge shift in strategy," he said in a statement.

International publishers ask European Union for copyright help

Straws in the copyright winds...

A letter written to the European Union by a group of leading European newspaper and magazine publishers on Thursday asked for enhanced copyright protection to help them generate revenue online, according to a story in the New York Times.

The publishers said widespread use of their work by online news aggregators and other Web sites was undermining their efforts to develop an online business models at a time when readers and advertisers are defecting from newspapers and magazines.
“Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it,” the publishers said in a letter to Viviane Reding, the European media and telecommunications commissioner. “Over the long term, this threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism.”

Axel Springer, which publishes the tabloid Bild, has led a movement in Germany to obtain so-called "neighboring rights" for publishers, which would give them greater control over secondary use by licensing aggregators who generates revenue from their work while still allowing private individuals to access news sites without such a license.

Martin Selmayr, a spokesman for Ms. Reding, said she had not yet reviewed the document and could not comment on it. But he referred to a speech she gave Thursday in Brussels, in which she said that a top priority for developing the digital economy in Europe was the creation of “a simple, consumer-friendly legal framework for accessing digital content in Europe’s single market, while ensuring at the same time fair remuneration of creators.”

The petition has been signed by executives of News Corp., Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr, Lagardère, Independent News & Media, the Daily Mail & General Trust, Burda Media and the Espresso Group, among others. Neither the International Herald Tribune nor its parent, The New York Times, is among the signatories.

* * *

Meanwhile, the New York Times is again actively exploring charging some sort of monthly fee for access to its main website, according to a story carried by Bloomberg News. The company circulated a survey to subscribers asking them if they'd consider paying a $2.50 monthly fee to access Nytimes.com while others were asked to pay $5.

“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you’re going to lose some readers as a result,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”

The story pointed out that News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal charges for access to some of its Web site’s content and publishers including Hearst Corp. and E.W. Scripps Co. have said they are considering pay models. It also noted that the Times once before had a pay model for some of its lead columnists and certain editorial content with its Times Select, which generated $10 million annually and had 20,000 users, but was discontinued in 2007.

High-powered trio setting up system to enable pay-for-content

Several longtime media players, including Stephen Brill (creator of Brill's Content, Court TV and American Lawyer) have launched a company called Journalism Online Inc. which aims to provide print publishers with the tools necessary to get paid for their online content.

Along with Brill, the company includes Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and Leo Hindery, who headed Tele-Communications Inc., Global Crossing and the Yes Network.

As the New York Times story reported waspishly, "Their plan might not draw much attention save for the stature of the people involved."

Journalism Online hopes to have a product ready by fall and their unique selling propositions are that readers could use a single system for different publications and publishers would not have to develop their own system.

No publishers have so far signed on as clients, but active talks have been held.

As the company envisions the system, a non-paying reader on a magazine or newspaper site would reach a certain point and see a page asking for payment — the Journalism Online system, operating within the publication’s Web site. But a reader who wanted a subscription to multiple sites would go directly to the new company’s own site.

“The most important thing is it’s simple to use,” Mr. Brill said in an interview. “Much of the barrier to charging online is the transaction friction, as opposed to the actual cost. With this system, you’d have a single password, give your credit number just once.”

He said that for the unlimited subscriptions, “we’re playing with a figure of $15 a month.”

Each publisher would be free to set its own policies, like determining which items are free and which are not, setting its own prices, and deciding whether to use a pay-per-click system or a daily, weekly or monthly subscription rate.