Telegraph paywall initiative is an interesting strategic shift
 |
| Chris Evans: seeking deeper engagement |
Summary
The Telegraph Media Group came to a decision to introduce a paywall for 'premium content' and this decision has been labelled as being an interesting strategic and philosophical shift. They believe that journalism is worth paying for despite the paywall only covering a small amount of the output that the Daily and Sunday Telegraph produce. This model is metered it allowed eight free items to be read a week which is relatively easy to circumvent (by clearing cookies). Though the hard paywall will prevent any free reading and therefore mean that TMG's audience will have to pay for subscription if they wish to receive stories from any of the group's content. The editor Chris Evans pictured above believes that the paywall will allow them to know more about their audience. Evans hopes that he can build a community with the restoration of the below the line comments as well kicking off the paywall to learn more about audience members and engage better with them. Evans says in time should subscription increase more and more content will slowly be moved into the premium section behind the paywall.
Key Statistics
- Paywall will involve only 15% of the output from Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph initially.
- 85% of the online content will now be free to access
- Ambition to treble TMG's digital audience by the end of 2017
- 82% of its digital readers access content through mobile devices, huge increase on last year when it wasn't much more than 50%
My Opinion
Introducing the paywall is a way for TMG to better their profits which they will get through audience subscriptions, in a nut shell. However, I do not think that a paywall is going to work as a long-term solution for the problems that newspaper conglomerates are facing. The TMG group are saying that they are introducing a paywall because they want to get to know their audience better but I do not understand how that can happen through a paywall to the extend that they want. Yeah, sure a paywall will allow them to figure out if they have a majority AB audience or C1/2 audience but not much past that. However, some people are extremely loyal to the paper so therefore are more likely to pay the subscription in comparison to the occasional readers. I feel like TMG group need to find another way in which to get to know their audience better.
No comments:
Post a Comment