Online news paywalls - predictions for 2010
Jinfo Blog

18th January 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

LiveWire contributors have been reporting on the issue of introducing paywalls to newspapers‘ online sites for many weeks now (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e24652 ; http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22457 ; http://www.vivavip.com/go/e19910). Now Ovum, a technology consulting firm has published a report on trends in the media and broadcast technology sector in 2010((http://digbig.com/5baydh) , confirming what most pundits have been saying all along: introducing universal paywalls will just lead to more misery for newspaper publishers already struggling in the current economic climate. Ovum predicts that as the print sector continues in its attempts to monetize, more newspapers will simply go to the wall, or as paidcontent puts it so graphically, “ creatively destruct” (http://digbig.com/5baydt). According to Ovum, it will be technology outfits involved in developing new billing platforms that will benefit most from the experimentation with business models. Meanwhile, it is always worth seeing how our European neighbours are handling the crisis in the print sector: Mecom (http://www.mecom.co.uk/), a newspaper group that publishes more than 300 titles in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Poland, believes that newspapers can make money online – if they charge for unique content only. According to reports (http://digbig.com/5baydw), Mecom introduced paywalls for legal and financial information in some of its Polish and Danish publications respectively, without adverse effects on trading results. Mecom’s David Montgomery is also an advocate of introducing more local content to bring in the punters. No doubt 2010 will see many more experiments with content and billing until somebody finds that winning formula.

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