NYT's Gets 100,000 Subscribers To The Paywall... But It's Too Early To Tell If That Means Anything
from the let's-wait-and-see dept
With the NYT's latest earnings is the news that it's been able to sign up 100,000 people for its new not-really-a-paywall. However, even the NYT seems to admit it has no idea what this number really means, since many of those include discounted offerings, and there's no clear indication whether or not those people will stick around later. In fact, as reader Ragaboo suggests, the NYT was using Groupon to push super cheap subscriptions over the past few weeks, leading to speculation that it was looking for a last minute "push" to boost its numbers. Separately, we'd already seen that automaker Lincoln was offering people free subscriptions as well. So, while this is an interesting bit of data, it'll be more interesting to see what happens next. The other interesting tidbit is that digital ad revenue grew 4.5%, which seems slower than some other online properties lately, and which certainly raises questions about whether the paywall is harming online ad growth -- especially considering the rather substantial drop in traffic. Given that online ad revenue continues to rise, and subscriptions to the paper continue to drop, it still appears like the NYT is betting on the wrong horse in this race.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: newspapers, paywalls
Companies: ny times
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Poor numbers
Granted, as I'm sure many people online pointed out, the conversion rate that they were hoping for was just insane. On today's internet, conversion rates of less than 1% are the norm. No matter how valuable you think that you are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apparently Mike, you are better at spreading FUD than we suspected.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Wait, no that doesn't work.
BUT...BUT...INTERBUTTZ!
Nonono, that's not right either.
I'm struggling, can soemone give me a hand here?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
How about that?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"I wouldn't have bought it anyway" does actually apply in some situations...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: NYT's Gets 100,000 Subscribers To The Paywall
[ link to this | view in chronology ]