5 ms·
>"Depending on the actual CPM, financially they are doing at least two to four times better than they were before."
by carbocation 16y ago
>"Depending on the actual CPM, financially they are doing at least two to four times better than they were before."
- scrrr 16y agoYep, and advertisers can now target readers that are willing to spend money online.
- axod 16y agoWait so after you subscribe, paying hard cash for access, they still show you advertisements? Who are these suckers paying for access?
- awa 16y agoOh so you don't get ads on your TV or in the magazines you subscribe to?
- flipbrad 16y agoWell, I don't. Whether it's the BBC, ITV, iPlayer, 4OD for video, or Le Canard Enchaine for press, or the stuff in my RSS feed, I'm only paying one way or the other.
- ahi 16y agoTV is free? Most magazine subscriptions can be had for ~$10/year.
- awa 16y agoThe parent objected to paying cash + being subjected to looking at ads. I tried to point out that's how traditional media has worked with examples from TV and magazines.
- jrockway 16y agoOff topic... but welcome back from your sabbatical. You may want to update your profile :)
- axod 16y agoThanks jrockway. Updated :)
- ceejayoz 16y agoNot to mention users who are identifiable down to address and name level, instead of mostly on an IP-only basis.
- irrelative 16y agoExactly. As a businesses, they aren't trying to optimize viewers but profits.
- megablast 16y agoNo, this is completely wrong. This is suggesting that having fewer people reading your newspaper is not a bad thing, when it is exactly the opposite. You want more people to read your newspaper, and there is a indirect cost to losing those readers. One of the main things you are losing is influence, all those readers have gone to another paper to get their news. Nevertheless an interesting experiment, we will see how long the times keeps this up.
- recoil 16y agoOne respect in which more readers is a bad thing is hosting costs, which the OA doesn't mention. Can anybody who knows more about this than me shed any light here? How much more does it cost to serve millions of "freeloading" users per month vs the 100,000 they're dealing with now?
- guelo 16y agoThe problem is over time as noone links to their stories they slowly lose relevancy and their brand diminishes. Remember, the future of news is online, and right now they are probably at their peak number of subscribers. They have nowhere to go but down.
- timthorn 16y agoThe Times is the establisment newspaper in the UK - it's like the BBC of print. The UK newspaper market is not like the US and is still pretty healthy; The Times isn't going anywhere in the near future.
- rwmj 16y agoAgreed for the print newspaper. That's going to slowly wither or whatever you think will happen to newspapers. However we're talking about the website, and that really works in a different way and it's obvious that the Times does not understand the way the web and search engines work.
- bigfudge 16y agoAre you based in the UK? Do you read The Times? There might be lingering perception that the times is a quality paper — perhaps we all watch too many re-runs of Jeeves and Wooster — but the Times is more of a Sky News than a BBC.
- timthorn 16y agoYes, I'm UK based. I read The Times, Telegraph, Guardian or FT, depending on the day. Whilst I think BBC News on radio and TV is good quality, the website is often of appaling quality.
- electromagnetic 16y agoReally? I think hiding from your consumers behind a paywall, slashing your site traffic and plummeting yourself off of Google will invariably kill any web business. Name a startup that actively hid from its users and survived? Can you even think of a startup that actively hid from its users?