News Limited’s Campbell Reid talks paywalls
The editorial director of News Limited, Campbell Reid, was feature guest for this week’s Mumbrella video hangout.
He discussed News Limited’s move to a metered paywall strategy.
Reid – a three decade News Limited veteran – has edited papers including The Daily Telegraph and The Australian and has been group editorial director for nearly six years. He is also a board member of the Press Council and chairs the AAP.
Questions for Campbell Reid:
1) If paywalls are the way forward, why do Fairfax and News Ltd hide and/or obfuscate digital subscriptions? Is this a sign that they fail to work when implemented?
2) How can advertisers trust digital metrics when they are so easily faked and/or manipulated? Examples include Fairfax’s auto-start videos and the ability to purchase fake page-views, likes, followers etc
Will news.com.au go behind a paywall? If not, why would anyone pay for online access to the masthead sites when they will most likely be able get the content from news.com.au? To put it another way: how will news.com.au be treated in your overall paywall strategy? Thanks.
Apparently, printed newspapers did not rely on their masthead price for revenue – it was incidental to the ad revenue. Why then, in the absence of printing costs, is there a move towards paywall? How do the numbers compare with loss of ad revenue (and loss of ‘readership’ versus ‘subscribers’)?
ie. Many more people click on sites sans paywall than those behind one. Doesn’t that cause ad revenue to go down because the same level of ‘readership’ or clicks can’t possibly be attained? And can that ground ever be made up with an increase in ‘masthead’/paywall revenue?
Thanks
Question:
How has Campbell judged the performance of the SuperFooty Live HQ product in conjunction with the Supercoach competition? Does he see fantasy football as an important asset to get people to pay for News Ltd content?
Question:
Dear Mr Campbell,
I’m curious to what degree has the paywall strategy been developed to gather data on readers/users? Do revenues generated in selling this data replace traditional display advertising revenue?
Sowhen the paywall is up, how much will be hit the aggregators for who now nick your stuff.
If digital media is replacing printed media why did newspaper circulations decline 20 years before they had web sites?
Could it be those running newspapers stopped producing newspapers people wanted to read?
If that is so they what makes anyone think digital newspapers have a future?
Why not look at what was done well 40 years ago and go back to doing it?
As one who sells newspaper adverting space, in a well read publication, it amazes me just how the middle managers expect you to flog the same old thing at more cost to get to less readers. Get real! Newspapers will always have a important role to play, but they will never work at the margins of 15 years ago, so don’t choke them and manage them to find a natural level in the media landscape.
@Lindsay. Newspapers have lost the plot. They’re just not stimulating anymore. They can’t engage. Fancy layouts, edgy headlines and flashy images are used to tart up bland content and typos galore. Copy lacks style. There’s no excitement. In fact, Campbell Reid is the perfect personification of the newspapers he controls. He’s probably a nice man but he comes across as dull and uninteresting. Nice men can’t light fires because they can’t take the heat.
JimP…have a look at the numbers when a big story breaks…Queensland floods for example…sales go through the roof, newspapers can and do engage, people want the story behind the 30 second TV grabs or the one sentence tweet…the plot hasn’t been lost, just been changed to suit…news has currency
No Pete, the plot has been lost. The proof is the number of people who buy newspapers after a big story breaks who do not buy the papers at other times. If the pot had not been lost those people would be buying the papers everyday. Back in the 1970s there were people explaining how circulations were about to drop and it was then as it is now, because the newspapers had lost the plot. The only thing different between now and the 1970s is the internet, which is used by the newspaper industry to avoid taking responsibility for getting things wrong.
Hi everyone,
Campbell here. Thought I would respond to your comments and questions.
If paywalls are the way forward, why do Fairfax and News Ltd hide and/or obfuscate digital subscriptions? Is this a sign that they fail to work when implemented?
We’re not hiding at all – hence me doing the mumbrella hangout and now responding here. And our papers and websites are featuring it prominently.
How can advertisers trust digital metrics when they are so easily faked and/or manipulated? Examples include Fairfax’s auto-start videos and the ability to purchase fake page-views, likes, followers etc
We are open and honest about our digital data, and we comply with the IAB’s standards. We have auto-play, but it is completely controllable by consumers – they can switch it off, across the network, with one click. We don’t purchase page-views or followers.
Will news.com.au go behind a paywall? If not, why would anyone pay for online access to the masthead sites when they will most likely be able get the content from news.com.au? To put it another way: how will news.com.au be treated in your overall paywall strategy?
News.com.au will remain free. It’s got a great audience and will compete vigorously in the market it is in. News.com.au doesn’t publish anywhere near all the content from the metro sites. Plus, digital subscribers will get a lot of subscriber-only content, such as the FOX SPORTS content.
Apparently, printed newspapers did not rely on their masthead price for revenue – it was incidental to the ad revenue. Why then, in the absence of printing costs, is there a move towards paywall? How do the numbers compare with loss of ad revenue (and loss of ‘readership’ versus ‘subscribers’)?
ie. Many more people click on sites sans paywall than those behind one. Doesn’t that cause ad revenue to go down because the same level of ‘readership’ or clicks can’t possibly be attained? And can that ground ever be made up with an increase in ‘masthead’/paywall revenue?
It is true that the split between ad revenue and circulation revenue of printed papers is weighted toward ad revenue. However do not underestimate the size of circulation revenue – it is huge. We sell over 10 million newspapers a week.
Even ignoring that, I don’t agree with the argument that says just because you don’t have print costs, you shouldn’t charge. We believe in our journalism. We believe it has value. And we believe that we can create digital products that people will value enough to pay for.
Yes, there may be be a drop in traffic. It’s our job to minimise that drop and make a compelling case for subscription. But, since some traffic – those people who flit in and out of our sites – isn’t valuable and we aren’t sold out of digital inventory anyway, we can afford to lose some traffic with no material impact on ad revenue.
If you take The Australian as an example, it is earning more money from having a subscription plus ad revenue model than it did form ad revenue alone. Any difference in traffic has been immaterial to the bottom line.
It is worth noting that overall traffic to our digital and mobile news sites has grown strongly in recent times
How has Campbell judged the performance of the SuperFooty Live HQ product in conjunction with the Supercoach competition? Does he see fantasy football as an important asset to get people to pay for News Ltd content?
It’s extraordinarily popular. There are over 300,000 people signed up for SuperCoach AFL. Will anyone sign up for a digital subscription just to get SuperCoach Gold? Who knows. Does it make a great addition to the overall package? Definitely.
I’m curious to what degree has the paywall strategy been developed to gather data on readers/users? Do revenues generated in selling this data replace traditional display advertising revenue?
The data is valuable, no doubt, but it’s not the reason we’re doing this. We genuinely do want people to sign up and pay for our journalism, analysis and commentary!
So when the paywall is up, how much will be hit the aggregators for who now nick your stuff.
They are a pain, definitely. And we do protect our copyright. But frankly, there are always going to be people doing this. Some of them are just leeches and some do provide us with some traffic. We don’t spend too much time worrying about them – we’re concentrating on creating great content and products that people will want to pay for.
If digital media is replacing printed media why did newspaper circulations decline 20 years before they had web sites?
Could it be those running newspapers stopped producing newspapers people wanted to read?
If that is so they what makes anyone think digital newspapers have a future?
Why not look at what was done well 40 years ago and go back to doing it?
It’s not true that circulation started to decline 20 years ago, but that’s kind of a moot point – printed circulation is declining. Although as I said to an earlier question – we sell 10.4 million papers a week and distribute a further 6.7 million (mX and our community titles).
But thanks to digital channels our total audience is bigger than we’ve ever had before and growing rapidly. Our problem isn’t drawing an audience – we’ve got record numbers. Our challenge is to convince them to subscribe.
As one who sells newspaper adverting space, in a well read publication, it amazes me just how the middle managers expect you to flog the same old thing at more cost to get to less readers. Get real! Newspapers will always have a important role to play, but they will never work at the margins of 15 years ago, so don’t choke them and manage them to find a natural level in the media landscape.
I think this is more advice than a question. Believe me, we are all too aware of cost, readership and margins. We’re pretty confident that there’s a great business model to be had here, and the success of digital subscriptions around the world suggests we’re not the only ones.
Newspapers have lost the plot. They’re just not stimulating anymore. They can’t engage. Fancy layouts, edgy headlines and flashy images are used to tart up bland content and typos galore. Copy lacks style. There’s no excitement. In fact, Campbell Reid is the perfect personification of the newspapers he controls. He’s probably a nice man but he comes across as dull and uninteresting. Nice men can’t light fires because they can’t take the heat.
Personal criticism aside, I’d point you to my answer above. We’ve got more readers than we’ve ever had before at any time in our history. People love our content and want to read more of it. Our challenge is creating products around it that are convenient to people’s lifestyles – that is we deliver it in a time and manner that works for them, on the platforms they want it – at a price they think is worth signing up for. On your last point, I like to think that I am pretty handy at lighting fires!