NewsBeat

6 NewsBeat December 2015 Real pay wall value may lie in data By ERICA SWEENEY t first, publishers built pay walls to keep revenue from leaking away. As it turns out, they may be much more valuable for the data they've helped to collect. Over the years, many publishers have added pay walls as a way of establishing value to their content, and in the process discovered that there isn't a one- size-fits-all approach to creating an efficient pay wall that works for their market. Now that publishers are a few years into their paid content systems, they are realizing that, while there is money to be made, the revenue is often incremental and that value also lies in the data that can be collected from subscribers via pay walls. The next challenge is understanding and using this data effectively. The data that publishers obtain from their pay wall subscribers is hugely valuable, says Kelly Leach, CEO of Piano Media, which recently acquired Press+. The company works with about 70 publishing companies in 16 countries and about 500 websites. "Learning more about their audience and what content is so valued by consumers such that it prompts them to pay for access is quite useful information," she says. "The data that is collected can inform a range of activities including advertising targeting, subscription-offer pricing and configuration, the merchandising of digital subscriptions and even decisions about how to allocate limited resources to create content." Establishing a value on content is essential for newspapers, says Marc Wilson, CEO and general manager of TownNews, a cloud-based software for publishers. The company works with more than 1,600 media outlets. Beyond the increased revenue, Wilson says emerging technology allows publishers to gather data about readers simply by tracking when, where and how the readers use the Web and mobile sites. Demographic details — age, gender and interests — can be obtained through print and online subscriptions, online registration, newsletter sign-ups and participation in polls, contests or deals. "Some publishers are doing a good job, but many aren't fully maximizing the information that's available to them," Wilson says. "It's one more step in the transition into digital." He says the demographic data can help publishers tailor and recommend specific content, which could increase subscriptions and the value of content. Plus, understanding subscribers' habits is an essential component of advertising proposals, as a way of attracting new advertisers and sustaining existing ones, says Rich Forsgren, director of audience development strategy and technology at the Erie Times-News. "You can go back to your advertisers and say 'this is your audience,'" he says, explaining that subscriber data shows advertisers who the content reaches and what readers want, which allows advertisers to identify and target specific audiences. This helps them maximize their investments, encouraging larger or more frequent ad buys in the future. Advertisers are willing to pay more to know their audience, Wilson explains. Because there is so much online advertising inventory available, publishers can obtain higher cost-per-thousand rates by segmenting their ad inventory using the data collected. "If publishers can tell advertisers specifics (age, gender or interests), they can and do receive higher ad rates," he says. "This is true for both locally sold and national programmatic rates." The data gathered via pay walls can also be used to target content to readers and personalize experiences, says Peter Marsh, VP of product marketing at NewsCycle Solutions. He explains that there's a growing awareness among publishers of the value of subscription data. Subscriber data from pay walls can serve as an authentication tool, assuring advertisers that people, rather than bots, are viewing their ads, he explains. Pay wall specifications Over the past few years, Marsh says pay wall technology has become more sophisticated in integrating with newspapers' existing circulation and content management systems. The technology also allows for flexibility in defining pay wall specifics. Newspapers set up their pay walls or pay meters in a variety of ways, usually based on size, location and level of competition. Hard pay walls require a paid subscription to access any content. Pay meters allow readers to access a set number of stories a month before being asked to subscribe. Many newspapers bundle print and digital subscriptions, and also offer digital-only access. Content management vendors and publishers say that day passes are becoming an increasingly popular option. Experimenting in Erie The Erie Times-News in Erie, Pa., went live with a pay meter on its portal site GoErie.com in October 2013 after about a year and a half of testing and planning, says Rich Forsgren, the paper's director of audience development strategy and technology. The 126-year-old newspaper is family run, and is the only daily newspaper in the area, Forsgren explains. Its print circulation is 40,000 daily and 55,000 on Sunday. GoErie.com features content from the print edition and online-only blogs. It receives about 60 million page views and 5.5 million unique visitors per year. When the pay meter was first put in place, he says there was a reduction in page views, but it has bounced back. The site uses NewsCycle's platform and has had its meter set at 15 articles per 30-day period before requiring a monthly subscription of $9.95. About 600 users are pure-play digital; the goal is 2,400. A Publishers initially adopted pay walls and paid content strategies to establish value for their products and open up a much-needed new digital revenue stream. Since then, many have tweaked their individual models to better fit their markets, and some are also coming to realize there may be another layer of value and revenue to be mined from pay walls: the consumer data they collect from them.

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