Kamis, 08 Mei 2014

Nieman Journalism Lab

Nieman Journalism Lab

If my newspaper puts up a metered paywall, how many people will pay? Here’s some data

Posted: 07 May 2014 11:31 AM PDT

So your newspaper is thinking about putting up a metered paywall. What kind of results can you expect?

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The answer will depend on a lot of factors — the makeup of your audience, how tight or loose you set the meter, what you’re charging. But from looking at other newspapers’ results — more than 500 have a paywall in the U.S. alone — you can start to estimate.

Here’s one data point, from paywall service provider Press+, which runs hundreds of those sites. Of a site’s monthly uniques, about 3 to 4 percent will hit the paywall — that is, they’ll consume enough content to be told they have to pay to read more. And about 0.5 percent of your monthly uniques will hit the wall and actually pay.

That’s from this article by Jeff Hartley, vice president of consumer revenue for Morris Publishing Group, at the Newspaper Association of America site.

With the help of our digital subscription management partner, Press+, we know what percentage of our unique visitors is encountering a stop light box (SR) and how many, once stopped, are converting to a subscription (PSCR). Because Press+ has so many affiliates, 450 and counting, they’ve established performance benchmarks for both the SR and the PSCR. These indicators are crucial to knowing how effective you are in engaging readers and converting them to paid sales (Note: these metrics can be set these up on your own using Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.)

Based on data from Press+, the average publication has a stop rate (the number of unique visitors that see a stop light box) of 3%-4%, but high performers stop between 5%-10% of unique visitors. A PSCR rate (the number of unique visitors that are stopped and then purchase) of 0.5% is considered average, while high performers convert 1%-2% of stops into paying subscribers.

(You may notice that that last sentence is a little screwy — the first half says it’s measuring the share of unique visitors, while the second half measures share of stops. I’m pretty sure the second half of that last sentence is misworded — it should be uniques. Otherwise we’d be talking truly tiny numbers — 0.03 × 0.005 — which might buy you a couple cups of coffee, but not much more.)

So, back of the envelope math: Your site gets 1 million monthly unique visitors. A typical metered paywall would be invisible to the vast majority of them — they won’t read enough stories to hit it. On average, you might expect 30,000 to 40,000 to hit the paywall — but that could be as high as 50,000 to 100,000. Of those stopped, you’ll probably get 5,000 to pay up — if you’re a top performer, maybe 10,000 or 20,000.

Still, even within Press+ customers, there’s a wide range of outcomes; as Ken Doctor reported for us last November, the best Press+ paywalls far outperform the worst. The details matter:

While each publisher gets its own data, Press+ gets it all. Out of that, you get one of the major selling points Press+ uses with its clients: "We'll share best practices with you." Press+ has measured the differential between its highest- and lowest-performing sites at 10-to-1, and that would be an impressive difference-maker in revenue return. Get the metering, marketing, messaging, and more right, Press+ says, and you'll more than make up the revenue share (~20 percent) you pay us.

A lesson from the disruption of the news business? Don’t wait until your backs are against the wall to innovate

Posted: 07 May 2014 10:29 AM PDT

Let’s say you’re in an industry that’s facing the prospect of technological disruption. What could you learn from the news business, which has — maybe you noticed — had a rough time of late?

That was a question posed to Raju Narisetti, the senior vice president for strategy at News Corp, and Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times public editor, in an interview with Reuters TV at the recent International Journalism Festival in bucolic Perugia, Italy.

While Sullivan noted that “desperation has been the mother of invention for the newspaper business and the media business in general,” Narisetti said that other industries should not make the same mistakes and only wait to innovate until they’re pushed to the brink:

Hopefully, they won’t make the same mistake the news industry has made, which is to wait until you’re pushed to the wall before you start to innovate. I think the ability to innovate in advance of changes is important for these industries. The other thing is that as an industry, newspapers were never able to attract good business talent. We attracted the best journalism talent. And I think that’s been a big shortcoming as we’ve needed to adapt to business models, and hopefully some of the other industries are learning from that and are gathering their talent in all aspects of their business.

Narisetti also notes, tongue slightly in cheek, what’s stopping something like Blendle to unite all the newspapers in the U.S.: “Unfortunately or fortunately in the U.S., there’s this thing called the Sherman Act which prevents us all from grouping up together and launching one single product.”

Watch the full interview above; Narisetti and Sullivan touch on a few other topics, including paywalls, increased segmentation in the media, and more.

Cheap smartphones, low bandwidth, and a billion people: Where is India’s news headed?

Posted: 07 May 2014 07:00 AM PDT

We’re approaching the end of the Nieman Fellowship year — a natural time for fellows to reflect on what they’ve learned. Nieman-Berkman Fellow Hasit Shah of the BBC gave a talk yesterday on the research he’s done during his year here at Harvard. Hasit’s interested in the digitization of India, and how news consumption patterns and behaviors there are rapidly developing. Here’s a video of his talk:

He presented conflicting portraits of India. On the one hand, there are 1 billion people in India without Internet access, 300 million without electricity, and the same number of illiterate citizens. At the same time, 100 million people there are on Facebook, 30 million are on Twitter and 50 million use WhatsApp. It’s a dichotomy he said was well captured in this clip:

On top of that, Indian digital media consumers still mostly rely on very low bandwidth, sub-par smartphone technology. And oh, they speak over 20 languages. “I came to Harvard with skepticism and pessimism about India’s prospects,” he said. “You look at that and think, How is it possible for people to be hooked up to the Internet when those basic development indices are being fixed so slowly?”

There is some innovation happening in the Indian market, he acknowledged, pointing to companies like Storypick and ScoopWhoop. “There isn’t a lot that’s visible in terms of people designing news services for that non-English speaking, low literacy, low attention span, low bandwidth audience — which is massive as a business opportunity, but also if you believe in journalism as a social good,” he says.

Hasit says he wants to spend more time developing an ethnographic study of the wants and needs of the Indian news audience. For example, messaging apps are a very popular way of communicating in India: “Chat apps are the primary mode of communication between friends and acquaintances,” he says. Messaging apps function as social networks, and news companies like the BBC are already taking advantage of them for the distribution of news. Understanding how and why Indians use these platforms is essential to understanding how a new product would best work.

He did float one prototype for a newsy comic book that would offer useful information in a simple presentation. Comic books are a commonly used tool to teach children Indian cultural history, he says, and graphic novels are popular with adults. His idea would mimic that visual approach, but instead for current events and other information. He also suggested an audio supplement might be included for those who cannot read, as well as a template that would allow users to create their own content.
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