Paywalls fail to dent audiences for News and Fairfax
News Corp Australia and Fairfax Media’s online audiences appear to have remained strong, despite both implementing paywalls in recent months.
The latest Nielsen Online Ratings show that the order of the top 10 Australian news websites has barely changed since News implemented a metered paywall, on the Telegraph and Herald Sun websites, in May while rivals Fairfax introduced paywalls, on the SMH and Age’s websites, in June.
The SMH and The Age have both maintained or grown their audience in July compared with previous months, in May they had audiences of 2.7m and 2m respectively. The insight into Fairfax’s online audience comes a day after Fairfax revealed it had so far registered 68,000 paid digital subscribers.
News Corp websites The Herald Sun and Telegraph also appear not to have lost audience significantly from the unique audiences of 1.7m and 1.1 m in May. News last month revealed that so far it had around 50,000 digital subscribers to its tabloid news websites, plus an additional 50,000 people who subscribed to The Australian’s “freeium” paywalled website.
There is no problem in maintaining online audiences when there is a very easy way around the paywall that only take s few seconds.
I guess you’d still be counted as a unique visitor if you arrived at the paywall, were blocked and bounced off?
Or if you were using Chrome’s incognito to get through the Fairfax paywalls then you’d count as multiple uniques.
Can anyone post the changes in bounce rates or pages per session here? That would give us a better picture,
Traffic is a cost measure. What the Fairfax results show is that the traffic results have inadequate monetary value.
The SMH numbers have got to be inflated by the use of incognito mode or similar techniques. I’m still training myself to browse the SMH from only an incognito window. Quite often, I’ll have to switch when I get the splash screen. I’ve gone from 3 or 4 cookies to 6 – 8 cookies a day.
If the numbers were any good Fairfax would not be losing money. The only numbers that count are the ones that keep shareholders happy – and cost cutting won’t do it.
The above are examples of why the market insists on using panel-based metrics when talking about audience data. From the panel you get the incidence of incognito browsers, splash screens etc. so as to adjust the traffic data.
Why would paywalls dent browser numbers? both have metered paywalls … so total browsers shouldn’t change. The real story here is to look at pageviews in 2-3 months and see what impact it is/isn’t having.
Does anyone actually trust these metrics?
There is a depressing video on afr.com of Hywood in which he is asked when the business will stop cutting and start making money. Hywood, amazingly, asserts more than once that he has been telling the world that Fairfax is stuffed. There is no answer. It’s as if the admission that you are stuffed is a strategy.
Greg: never send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (As someone once wrote. )
Maybe it’s because people know how to clear their cookies.
Partial paywalls are pointless. Lock everyone out and see if people pay for it or keep it open. Everyone knows how to get around it.
Word has it plenty of people have told the NZ rural man how to grow a few things but the mower is out.
Another book for Fairfax on the horizon.
Some of the people on here talking about the way they get around paywalls are just plain cheap. For $25 per month you get full access to the Fairfax digital sites plus both weekend print papers delivered. I just can’t believe how reluctant some people are to part with a little bit of cash. If it weren’t for Fairfax, the Obeids & Macdonalds would be sitting pretty. I for one am more than happy to support decent investigative journalism. It seems to be the only thing that holds the crooks to account these days. I dread to think where we’d be if the only papers left were News tabloids.
TheFacts, for $25 less, you can get the exact same thing. Either build a proper wall, or don’t bother.
The facts: given the crap Fairfax publishes, it should be paying visitors $25 a month to stop by.
Daily Life, anyone? Seriously, pay $25 a month to read that tosh.
Hywood is on $50K A WEEK. Sure, his business is failing, but he’ll keep those cheques coming as long as possible. Hence, no reforms, no attempt to fix fairfax’s diseased newsroom culture. Business as usual until the business dies.
@TheFacts ‘Some of the people on here talking about the way they get around paywalls are just plain cheap.’
You can’t sack all the subs and most of the decent journalists and then expect the product to be valued. One example of investigative journalism does not entitle you to millions in revenue.
If Fairfax valued their own product as much as you do, they’d roll the dice and implement hard paywalls and see what the market thought of their product. My suspicion is the market wouldn’t value it much at all, and the company would die faster than it currently is.
@TheFacts, if Fairfax were selling anything that held a unique value we’d probably all happily pay for it, but 90% of is the same news that can be found elsewhere.
Just read brisbanetimes.com.au, it has almost exactly the same content as smh but no paywall
Those metrics look dodgy.
As a loyal Fairfax reader for basically my whole life I was concerned when they started cutting journalist numbers (as all newspapers have). However, I can honestly say I have not noticed any deterioration in quality. There are still plenty of great articles and analysis. Saturday’s paper is massive.
Some commenters have suggested they can get the same news from elsewhere. Really? Where? news.com.au? Maybe if you enjoy the latest celebrity gossip or other fluff-style news. Or perhaps the Guardian which seemingly updates the site with new news once per week?
@TheFacts, we can get the facts from the ABC, which our hard earned tax dollars pay for. We can also get Slate, Mashable and AAP articles elsewhere for free.
McClymont’s journalism is awesome, if she went solo, I would gladly pay to continue reading her. The SMH as a whole is not a great package deal however.
Aside from whether you think some of us are tight arses or not, the “paywall” appears to have increased the SMH UV’s count.
Pay for journalism, or it will erode. It may erode at a small hard to notice pace. But it will erode. And become centralised. And be more heavily influenced by advertisers.
Cough up the money for your favourite news website.
You are looking at the wrong metric to measure the success or failure of the paywalls.
Uniques measured by Nielsen takes into account all unique devices that enter the site regardless if they were blocked by the paywall or not. Since SMH and The Age still receives traffic from Google and internal referrals, the uniques will remain unchanged until people decide to stop visiting them.
Look at the monthly page impressions to have a more accurate view on whether it is really working or not.
Keep in mind that even though the Paywall can be by passed by clearing your cookies, it is unlikely that your average Australian will know how to do it.
@Francis Setting your browser to clear cookies by default is basic online hygiene.
Everyone should know how to do it:
http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Y.....7s-Cookies
@Ex-reader, yup, everyone *should* know how to clear their cookies like how everyone *should* know how to change a light bulb, fix a leaky tap or change your engine oil, right?