News Corp. Claims 79,000 Subscribers To Its Paywall For The Times

from the details-please? dept

Back in November when News Corp. released some subscription info for its paywall for The Times/Sunday Times (publications which it walled off behind a complete paywall), the details were really lacking. They claimed 105,000 "paid" digital users, but that mixed up a bunch of different kinds of users, including one-off "daily" purchases and subscribers. They did say about 50% of those were "monthly" subscribers, but there was an introductory £1 per month rate, as compared to the full £8.67 per month rate that would go into effect after the first month. So, now, with News Corp. claiming 79,000 monthly subscribers, I'm wondering how those "intro" plan subscribers are being counted. Did all of them convert to full priced? How many dropped off? Are they still counting those who dropped off in that subscriber count?

Either way, while 79,000 subscribers may sound like an impressive number, I'm still not convinced the economics works out. Assuming that they're all paying the full price, subscribers are paying almost exactly $1 million per month. That's not bad, but it's not a really huge number for an operation like News Corp. either. And if it's true that traffic to the websites dropped about 90% from about 21 million unique visitors down to less than 3 million unique visitors, ad revenue from the site really isn't bringing in that much (no matter how many times they try to spin the audience as being "more valuable.") It still seems like they almost certainly gave up significantly more in ad revenue than they're making via the paywall, and while there are still new signups, over time it's going to be tougher and tougher to sign up new users. Clearly, the paywall is not a complete disaster, like some others, but it still doesn't seem like the economics add up here.

Filed Under: paywall, the times
Companies: news corp.

Murdoch's Paywall Numbers Sound Better Than They Really Are

from the let's-dig-in-a-bit... dept

Well, after lots of speculation, News Corp. is finally releasing some numbers on how the paywall is going for The Times and The Sunday Times -- of course, spinning them to sound positive. However, the deeper you dig into the numbers, the less and less impressive they sound. The big numbers are as follows:

• 105,000 people have paid for either the website and/or Kindle and iPad apps.
• 50% of those people chose a "monthly" subscription, rather than a one off.
• 100,000 print subscribers have activated the digital accounts that come with their paper subscription (i.e., no additional payment).
• Trying to eliminate any "overlap" here, the company claims "close to 200,000" digital users.

Now, that's better than single or double digit numbers, certainly, but there's still plenty of reasons to be skeptical that these results represent any sort of success. First, the "close to 200,000" may be a stretch. Considering that they already admitted many paying users didn't get monthly subscriptions, it's a bit misleading to suggest that such folks are really "users" on par with subscribers. Second, I'm guessing there may be a bit more "overlap" than News Corp. seems to be assuming. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if many paper subscribers who also are addicted to their iPad/Kindles decided to subscribe to both.

But, more to the point, while they want to charge £2 per week, there has been a £1 per month "trial" option, which many people say they've signed up for just to see -- but there are indications that many have no interest in paying the full price.

On top of that, the real question is if News Corp. can actually make more money doing this, and there the numbers again break down. While the release itself repeatedly tries to play up how much "more valuable" these users are, the press release practically seems to be begging advertisers to come back, with transparent statements like "Many of the early adopters live in the UK, are relatively affluent and engage with the products frequently." That's a not-so-subtle coded attempt to entice back all the advertisers who have bailed.

Separately, the massive decrease in traffic to the websites is going to take a toll on ad revenue. Apparently, The Times Online went from 21 million unique visitors per month, down to 2 million for the Times and 700,000 for the Sunday Times. Of course, I'm again left wondering how that's the case if there are only 200,000 digital users. So, something doesn't quite add up there.

Even so... assuming that the traffic numbers are accurate, those are certainly in a range where I'm very familiar with what sorts of ad rates you can get for an online property whose users are "relatively affluent and engage with products frequently," and while they can support a small operation, it's a rounding error to an operation like News Corp. The traffic numbers just aren't that impressive for an operation that big.

Finally, the announcement tries to play down the idea that either publication has been taken out of the conversation, with someone claiming "Our stories get picked up in the echo chamber of the media," he said. "And readers comment on our stories." Note the weasel words. Do your stories get picked up more or less? I'll say that, pre-paywall, I quite frequently was sent to articles from The Times, and quite frequently linked to them. Since the paywall has gone up, there hasn't been a single time that someone has referred me to a story in The Times. Not once. And the fact that some readers comment again is not an indication that you're really a part of the conversation. How many sites are actually linking to stories? How much external traffic is being driven to the site? How many of those folks are converting. All of these things are numbers that actually mean something, and News Corp. seems silent on them... which is telling, as well.

Anyway, the announcement (of course) quotes James Murdoch saying how great these numbers are (what else is he going to say?). In a bit of interesting timing, next week, I'm actually going to be attending the Monaco Media Forum, where he's one of the co-chairs and will be giving a talk. I'm not yet sure if his talk is on-the-record (some are apparently not), but I'll see if I can pin him down on some of these numbers.

Filed Under: james murdoch, paywall, the sunday times, the times
Companies: news corp.

Rupert Murdoch's Paywall Disaster: Readers, Advertisers, Journalists & Publicists All Hate It

from the and-it's-working-for-who-exactly? dept

We had already seen the early indications that Rupert Murdoch's paywalls from The Times and The Sunday Times in the UK were a dismal failure, but as more information gets leaked about how the paywalls are working out, it's looking worse and worse. Beyond the fact that not too many people are signing up to pay, the move has upset advertisers who don't want to advertise to such a small audience:

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there." Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges.

On top of that, various PR people and publicists are keeping their sources away from Times reporters, preferring to provide access to news organizations where the story might actually get seen by people, rather than locked up behind Murdoch's paywall:

Publicists have told me that clients are increasingly reluctant to give interviews or stories to The Times, on the grounds that they would not be made freely available via search engines.

Oh yeah, and because of all of that, journalists at the papers aren't very happy either. None of this should be a surprise, of course. Many folks, including us, warned that this would happen. Murdoch and his supporters keep trying to spin a happy story about the paywall, and are expected to release some official data soon, but the feedback coming out already suggests that rather than "saving" his newspapers, this action may have sped up the troubles they face.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Early Indications Say Paywall For The Times Is A Dreadful Failure

from the no-surprise-there dept

Well, this will hardly surprise anyone, but as we predicted, Rupert Murdoch's new paywall for the Times is not looking so hot right now. Of course, there are no official stats (in part because Murdoch is hiding them, Michael Wolff (who is well connected in the Murdoch world, and wrote an entire book about the guy) says that his sources are reporting that almost no one is signing up to pay for the new site, and even those grandfathered in thanks to a paper subscription aren't using the site. As one of his sources explained, the new site is "an empty world."

Wolff's piece makes a few other important, but not surprising, points. He notes that journalists won't like being in such a world (and we've already seen some jump ship. But, he also notes that this makes The Times a lot less attractive as a place for folks to go with breaking stories:

A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. 'Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It's as though their writers don't exist anymore.'"

Of course, some reporters might note that they don't need or want publicists anyway. But, from the standpoint of reporters being able to get a good quote from someone, it seems like most PR people/publicists will go where the traffic actually is, rather than an empty walled garden.

The other point that Wolff brings up is a point that we've raised numerous times before: the way many people interact with news these days is they want to "interact" with it. They don't want to just passively "consume" it. But the whole concept of the paywall is to passively consume it. I was thinking about that as I watched this promo video that The Times put out to try to get people to subscribe to the paywall. As the person who sent it to me noted, you keep waiting for the reporters to turn to the screen and say "Please! Help me! Subscribe or Rupert will shoot me! I have a family!" But the other telling thing is that many of the reporters focus on how they can use this new-fangled "web" thing to deliver news in interesting ways. There's very little mention of actually interacting with the community at all (one reporter mentions it, but that's it). To everyone else, it's still very much about "we are the experts, you take what we give you."

We already know that with a similar experiment, the newspaper Newsday in New York got all of 35 outside subscribers. You have to believe that The Times is doing at least somewhat better than that. The question is how much... and (more importantly) how will they adjust? In the meantime, I'm curious if folks from The Times are still standing by their prediction that newspapers who don't follow in their footsteps will go out of business.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Dear Rupert: Before Putting Up A Paywall, It Helps To Have Your Staff Check The HTML

from the just-a-suggestion dept

As you know by now, Rupert Murdoch's The Times (of London) has kicked off its paywall experiment, with an editor there claiming that news publications that don't put up a paywall will go out of business. Perhaps. We shall see... but in the meantime, Rupert might want to find people who understand HTML before he turned on the paywall. Reader Craig sent over a link to a Times Online story that tries to get people to go to the new paywalled site "for full coverage, pictures and video from the Middle East." The only problem? The link is broken. I took a screenshot with my mouse over the link, and you can see that rather than a proper link, the link doubles up on the http at the beginning: http://http://www.thetimes.co.uk/etc.... If you can't see it in the image above, click through for a larger version. Clicking the actual link, of course, gets you a page not found error. Oops. Now, you can say this is a small mistake that anyone can make (hell, we've made it here at times), but for a big professional news organization that are trying to drive people to this new pay site, you would think they would have at least had someone double check the links... On top of this, it really highlights the pure annoyance factor that The Times has created for everyone. Not only is it locking up its content behind a paywall, it makes you go hunting for it, and redirects its audience to a totally different place (and, in this case, not even very well).

Filed Under: html, links, paywall, rupert murdoch, the times
Companies: news corp.