5 ms·

Media Websites Battle Faltering Ad Revenue and Traffic

16 points by tysone 11y ago

matt4077 11y ago
What a sad state of affairs... I used to discount the pessimists, but it appears that large segments of the population are indeed completely lost for any media that doesn't involve moving images. From what I read (even on HN) these people aren't just happy they can currently get most content for free – they actively loathe the so-called 'traditional media', to the point where they'd welcome the bankruptcy of the NYT or WSJ. It's going to be a dark future if we're to rely on tumblr to keep us informed. Donald Trump may one day represent the index case for the plague that killed the US's civil society. I'm still hoping for media to find sustainability online. I don't quite get why there's no Spotify for publishers yet. I feel like I'm grossly underpaying for my media consumption – yet I'm not going to pay >250$-800$/yr to any single publication for the 4 or 5 articles I read per month. There must be millions of people who'd gladly pay 500$/yr for universal access.
- pmontra 11y ago
  I won't pay anything in advance. I'd pay 1 cent per article but I want a preview first. If 1 cent looks too low, divide the price of a newspaper by the number of articles it contains. And I want the privilege to read with an adblocker, to be fairly sure not to be tracked and spied. And if pay per read will ever happen I'm quite sure we'll read less than now and we'll privilege free (as beer) information. After all I used to read only one newspaper and watch one or two tv news programs. Having to pay will make many people go back to that. That was sad too and people were easy to exploit by scarcity of information.
  - matt4077 11y ago
    That's the idea of a subscription model: you'd pay about the same as now (or, let's say, 10 years ago). But you get to read whatever you want because it doesn't cost anything to give you the extra content, knowing that you wouldn't pay for it anyway. Everybody wins: readers get more diversity, publishers stand to actually increase revenue because it's a much better offer than in the past and could attract more readers and the society profits when people are better informed. It won't be at <price of newspaper>/<articles per issue> because nobody reads every single article. There's also the slight complication that newspapers used to get about half their revenue from ads and classifieds and that's pretty much gone. We should find out in the next decade if there's an econmic model for journalism. If it turns out that there isn't, and if some sort of disruption hits TV as well... It's at least going to be interesting.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pj_costello 11y ago
The writing is on the wall, websites are in decline, NYT lost 50% of home page traffic in just 2 years: http://blog.naytev.com/publishers-must-adapt/ http://blog.naytev.com/publishers-must-adapt/
HoppedUpMenace 11y ago
Any site online providing news will be behind a Paywall at some point in the future, its inevitable.

16 points by tysone 11y ago

What a sad state of affairs... I used to discount the pessimists, but it appears that large segments of the population are indeed completely lost for any media that doesn't involve moving images. From what I read (even on HN) these people aren't just happy they can currently get most content for free – they actively loathe the so-called 'traditional media', to the point where they'd welcome the bankruptcy of the NYT or WSJ. It's going to be a dark future if we're to rely on tumblr to keep us informed. Donald Trump may one day represent the index case for the plague that killed the US's civil society. I'm still hoping for media to find sustainability online. I don't quite get why there's no Spotify for publishers yet. I feel like I'm grossly underpaying for my media consumption – yet I'm not going to pay >250$-800$/yr to any single publication for the 4 or 5 articles I read per month. There must be millions of people who'd gladly pay 500$/yr for universal access.

pmontra 11y ago
I won't pay anything in advance. I'd pay 1 cent per article but I want a preview first. If 1 cent looks too low, divide the price of a newspaper by the number of articles it contains. And I want the privilege to read with an adblocker, to be fairly sure not to be tracked and spied. And if pay per read will ever happen I'm quite sure we'll read less than now and we'll privilege free (as beer) information. After all I used to read only one newspaper and watch one or two tv news programs. Having to pay will make many people go back to that. That was sad too and people were easy to exploit by scarcity of information.
- matt4077 11y ago
  That's the idea of a subscription model: you'd pay about the same as now (or, let's say, 10 years ago). But you get to read whatever you want because it doesn't cost anything to give you the extra content, knowing that you wouldn't pay for it anyway. Everybody wins: readers get more diversity, publishers stand to actually increase revenue because it's a much better offer than in the past and could attract more readers and the society profits when people are better informed. It won't be at <price of newspaper>/<articles per issue> because nobody reads every single article. There's also the slight complication that newspapers used to get about half their revenue from ads and classifieds and that's pretty much gone. We should find out in the next decade if there's an econmic model for journalism. If it turns out that there isn't, and if some sort of disruption hits TV as well... It's at least going to be interesting.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pj_costello 11y ago

The writing is on the wall, websites are in decline, NYT lost 50% of home page traffic in just 2 years: http://blog.naytev.com/publishers-must-adapt/ http://blog.naytev.com/publishers-must-adapt/

HoppedUpMenace 11y ago

Any site online providing news will be behind a Paywall at some point in the future, its inevitable.