Advertisers turning away from The Times paywall
There’s a piece in the Independent today on The Times paywall that sheds some light on the reaction of advertisers and publicists to goings on at Wapping. With one media agency buyers saying that it is not advertising on the site because of the fall in traffic.
Two months into Rupert Murdoch’s great paywall push, with the News of the World apparently set to follow shortly, and the reaction is not a good one from media agencies and PR people.
The Indy quotes Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, saying that the 90% fall in traffic had severely dampened agency interest in advertising on TheTimes.co.uk
“We are just not advertising on it. If there’s no traffic on there, there’s no point in advertising on there. That [90% traffic fall] was the same forecast they were giving us prior to registration and the paywall going up, so whether it’s a reflection on reality or not, I don’t know.”
It is true that the 90% figure is in the ballpark for what News International were saying prior to the paywall launch at The Times – John Witherow, The Sunday Times editor, said in May the paywall could decimate readership by more than 90%; that yes Murdoch said recently that subscriber levels for The Times were “strong”; and that it is not about a numbers game…well it has to be about some numbers, doesn’t it?
It’s interesting to hear what Lynam has to say as MEC is a WPP agency and his comments come just a week or so after his boss Sir Martin Sorrell told us all that: “We think paywalls are essential because we think giving away content for free, particularly if consumers value that content, makes no sense. Consumers have to pay for content they value.”
Who do you listen to? While it is true consumers do have to pay for value – isn’t that why we pay for apps, for games, for movies? Content that we are culturally attuned to pay for? Unlike the web where paywalls, Canute like, fight the tide? I’m just asking.
The Indy also quotes publicists saying “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”. Dan Sabbagh, the former media editor at The Times, says “there’s no doubt that a lot of the reporters on the paper are unhappy, they feel that they have suffered a loss of reach”.
I’m convinced as I wrote the other day that the dated look of The Times website, its failure to feature non news higher, is damaging its paywall case (if it has one). I do believe quite strongly that the online paper needs to be radically redesigned to improve chances of success.
Still all of this is a moot point as what we all want to read is some official paywall data from News International. Apparently that will be here soon(ish).
All Comments
The key quote in the Indy article is: “News International could appease concerns from advertisers … by releasing these numbers.”
There are many articles on the loss of readership for the Times, the paywall being an “empty world,” projected losses in ad revenue, the effect on the brand etc…
But there’s only one figure that matters; Amount of revenue generated by users accessing content. Content they were previously getting for free.
Until these figures are available (probably over a 6-12 month period), no-one, bar the few at News International who are party to them, can say with any confidence what the implications of the paywall are.
Media agencies expressing concern, or publicists on behalf of their clients are, of course, to be taken seriously. But until the figures are released, it’s just guesswork, however informed it purports to be.
@YourBirdCanSing you’re right it is all down to “amount of revenue generated by users” and whether that turns out to be more or less than it was previously getting.
As well as not enticing people to flock and paywall it is not enticing people to buy more copies of the paper.
The smaller audience in itself is not a reason to not buy advertising on the site, hence the reason News Int declared themselves they expected a drop.
The idea was that a more engaged audience with a greater dwell time would be of more value to advertisers. Hence minutes spent and pages viewed on the site are more important metrics.
However the costs were at best fuzzy from the start. The idea that News Int could get 10 times the rate they previously achieved in order to compensate for the loss in traffic is far fetched. Minus of course the nominal amount they are generating in revenue from the subscriptions.
At the moment there is no indication of extended dwell time – and I’m not sure why their would be. Interesting to read the tweets between @JonathanHaynes’ and @timesjoanna re- the god debate. It should have been packed but apparently not.
RT @Watching the #GodDebate live with Richard Dawkins behind Times paywall. Six people are there. Even God can’t exist behind the Times paywall.
@JonathanHaynes And where have you got that figure from?!
@timesjoanna that was by counting how many people had posted by the time I tweeted, 10mins in. Go, on, what’s the actual traffic?
If agencies are buying on a CPM or CPA basis, what does it matter how the traffic has fallen. Clearly there’s still an audience there.
I’ve bookmarked this because I found it interesting. I would be very interested to hear more news on this. Thanks!
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