1Europe’s successful paid content strategies
Europe’s successful
paid content strategies
Sponsored by:
IEurope’s successful paid content strategies
Contents
Introduction
Foreword
Overview
Case Studies:
Aftenposten
BILD
Corriere della Sera
De Correspondent
The Economist
El Espaol
Financial Times
Le Monde
Liberation
Mediapart
NZZ
SZ
The National
The Times
VG
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IIEurope’s successful paid content strategies
Introduction
T
hank you for downloading TheMediaBriefing’s
report on
‘Europe’s successful Paid content strategies’
.
The brightest beacons for paid content are gen-
erally perceived to be American. The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal and latterly the Washington Post,
dominate discussions on how to do paid content right.
Leading UK publishers sometimes get an honourable men-
tion, but few media houses on the continent receive any
coverage outside their own borders.
We wanted to redress that imbalance by putting together a
report that introduces some of the leading European play-
ers in the paid content arena, and some interesting new-
comers. In producing the report, we have drawn on direct
interviews with executives involved in the implementation
of successful paid content strategies and the general indus-
try news reflecting their progress.
The report is not a guide to every contour of the paid
content landscape – there are publishers we will add to
future reports, like Poland’s Gazetta Wyborska which has
notched up growth of 30% in 2016 to secure 100,000 pay-
ing subscribers. But we hope we have managed to high-
light a representative cross-section of the European pub-
lishers succeeding in paid content at the moment.
Huge thanks go to our sponsor CeleraOne - without their
generous support we simply wouldn’t have been able to
invest the time needed to conduct the interviews and re-
search required to write this report.
We really hope you find the report useful and are very
keen to hear what you think. Please get in touch and let
us know what you liked and what you’d like to learn more
about in the future.
Very best regards,
Peter Houston, Editor at Large,
TheMediaBriefing
IIIEurope’s successful paid content strategies
Foreword
A
musingly, paywalls manage to be both the most
overrated and most underrated business model
in digital publishing. They are overrated when
publishers expect that the mere installation of a payment
button is all the work it takes to “save” journalism – actu-
ally, it takes much more. They are underrated when the
sceptical camp still claims that only the New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal can master the building of a
successful paid content scheme.
There are plenty of examples, from Amsterdam, Berlin,
Paris, Oslo, Munich or Zurich, where paid subscriptions
account for 20%, 30%, 40% or more of the digital revenues.
Who had expected this only four years ago This report
collects some of these case studies and identifies what
makes them successful.
It’s no surprise that paywalls don’t work if the effort is
half-hearted. Behind every success story is a dedicated
team. It’s the people who make the difference. They need
strong support from top management that is backed by
investments in technology, product and marketing.
The foundation is a journalism with a unique editorial tone
and loyal readers.
But that’s not enough: Alongside all these factors, a gener-
ous portion of tenacity is also required given that it gen-
erally takes more than two or three years to test, adapt or
change the paid model until the right proposition is found.
All these efforts offer plenty of advantages in the long run.
Subscription revenues allow for a much healthier income
mix, particularly when display advertising is increasingly
selling at low margins. Paywalls are a tool to build relation-
ships: Premium sections allow publishers to obligate users
to register, collecting cross-device data.
“
Behind every
success story is a
dedicated team
IVEurope’s successful paid content strategies
Identified and registered users are key for other business
models as well, such as advertising, newsletters or mer-
chandising.
Yet maybe the greatest side effect of a paywall is that it
makes publishers and editors focus on their most loyal
readers rather than chasing anonymous clicks.
During the last few years, paid content became one impor-
tant tool in the toolkit for many publishers. It will become
more important still as teams, technology and products
improve.
Strict, rule-based paywalls will soon be a thing of the past
as machine learning automates and optimizes conversion.
With the advent of adblockers, new subscriptions schemes
are emerging, e.g. those offering a light ad experience.
Certain media may also start playing key roles; videos or
podcasts can be a trigger for younger audiences.
It seems that most levers in the paid content machinery
have not yet been touched. We are both excited and proud
to continue our work together with publishers on this
journey.
Dr Falk-Florian Henrich, CeleraOne
“
Most levers in
the paid content
machinery have
not yet been
touched
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