Benedicte Guichard| Mon Nov 26 2012 CET| Industry insights
Music, games, news, apps are generating billions in revenues lately. In France, Forrester reports that the digital content market represents 1 billion Euros this year and will continue to grow to 1.8 billion in 2017 thanks to the proliferation of connected devices and the increasing popularity of subscriptions models like Spotify.
This trend is proved true for newspapers, as online users are increasingly ready to pay for online content and Forrester anticipates that in 2017, 20% of tablets users will pay to read the news online.
This shift in users behavior is good news for publisher and they certainly make it happen. How? By massively putting paywalls in place to create new sources of revenues to offset declines in print revenue. As shown in the infographic from bestcollegeonline.org below:
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Is it worth it?
Difficult question here. Some failed because of the loss of traffic inhere in any paywall implementation or a disappointing number of subscriptions or let’s face it because of the quality of the content that was not worth it!
For some others, the consequences have been more beneficial: the New York Times has become the reference when it comes to successful paywall, as stated in the infographic:
Mentalities are changing from both sides: users and publishers. Paywalls can certainly be seen as a long term bundled subscription offering, increasing customer’s engagement. What do you think? What are the key success factors for paywalls. Please share your experience.