New Media Sustainability: Challenges & Trends

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New Media Sustainability:
Challenges & Trends
Markus Ickstadt
Director of News, Streamworks International
New Media Sustainability Conference
May 11, 2013, Skopje, Macedonia

Challenges:
• “The difficulties of monetizing digital
content remain a key problem of the
funding of professional journalism online…
The tendency instead is for old media
producers to stick to old habits, rather than
embrace the opportunities and face up to
the challenges of digitization.” – (“Mapping
Digital Media: Macedonia – A Report by The
Open Society Foundations, 5 June 2012)

Challenges:
• Until 2009, Macedonian newspaper
publishers reported no significant changes
in circulation to advertising agents. In the
first half of 2009, they finally acknowledged
the fall of readership and claimed only one-
third of their previous numbers.

Challenges:
• In 2010, TV in Macedonia remained
dominant with 77.3 percent of the
population using it as their primary news
source.
• The most dramatic change has been the rise
of the internet as a primary news source,
now eclipsing newspapers (35 percent and
34 percent respectively), with radio ranking
fourth with 13 percent.

What may this be telling us?
• Audience is not the problem
• But current CPM revenues alone cannot
replace circulation
• Pure reproduction or repurposing of print
media content = Lack of engaging content
• Workload and lack of attention/resource
needed for new media production =
copyright rules are often disregarded

The “Silver Lining”:
• As news brands in combination with their
internet extensions, newspapers are still
the second most accessed news source for
the public.
• If print editions are to be considered in
isolation, they would fall to third place
behind the internet. Readers of print media
in Macedonia are concentrated in younger
and middle age groups

The “Silver Lining”:
• Demographics show a relatively high
preference for daily newspapers among
those aged 14–32 years and 42–59 years
• advertisers have not yet followed
audiences to a significant degree and by
and large remain loyal to traditional media.

Monetization models:
“The soft pay-wall”:
• NY Times has led the way in the US with its
“metered pay-wall” model, which allows
readers to access 20 free stories a month
without a digital subscription
• The Washington Post in March announced
it would follow, allowing access to 20 free
articles per month - articles accessed via
social media and external search engines
will not count toward the free limit

• loopholes in the pay-wall represent
strategy, not a mistake. And the Times is
relying more on subscribers to pay the bills:
Advertising was down in 2012
• “If you like it so much that you’re willing to
do a hack around a URL just to get a peek
under our dress … eventually you’re going
to give us some money.”
- David Carr, Media Correspondent in the Business
section of the NYT

Monetization Models:
“The Restrictive Pay-wall”:
• In the UK, a restrictive pay-wall is being
blamed for a fall in circulation for News
International’s The Times, which ranked
last behind competing general news
publications
- The National Readership Survey's PADD report

Monetization Models:
“The restrictive Pay-wall”:
• Restrictive pay-walls are not social-media friendly: Articles
behind its pay-wall cannot be shared with non-subscribers
on Twitter and Facebook.
• Circulation drops suggest this audience may be one that
newspapers can’t afford to lose.
• The restrictive pay-wall is often seen as a return to the
“traditional news model” of generating revenue.
• If enough newspapers shift away from advertising revenue
and instead choose to sell their content directly to the
reader, it could mean a dramatic shakeup in the current
news distribution model, which relies heavily on search-
engine traffic.

Cumulative Audience Growth:
• If pay-walls become the norm, readers will have to make
decisions about which publications get their money, and
their loyalty.
• Latest figures do underline the popularity of news-brands
and their relevance to consumers, despite the well-
documented digital transition and changing consumption
habits.
• In the UK quality sector in particular, readerships are
significantly boosted by website users, with all of the open
sites enjoying lifts between 59% and 188%:

Print (000s) Website Only (000s)
Net Print + Website
Total (Net - 000s)
Increase with Online
(%)
Quality
Financial Times 1,636 751 2,387 +45.9
The Daily Telegraph 4,170 7,822 11,992 +187.6
The Daily
Telegraph/The
Sunday Telegraph 4,881 7,614 12,495 +156.0
The Guardian 4,305 8,425 12,729 +195.7
The Guardian/The
Observer 4,969 8,184 13,153 +164.7
The Independent 2,944 3,392 6,336 +115.2
The
Independent/The
Independent on
Sunday 3,560 3,291 6,851 +92.4
The
Independent/The
Independent on
Sunday/i 5,206 3,094 8,300 +59.4
The Times 5,117 388 5,506 +7.6
The Times/The
Sunday Times 7,174 501 7,675 +7.0

Mid-market
Daily Express 3,638 483 4,121 +13.3
Daily
Express/Sunday
Express 4,485 480 4,965 +10.7
Daily Mail 11,289 8,729 20,018 +77.3
Daily Mail/The Mail
on Sunday 13,951 8,068 22,019 +57.8

Popular
Daily Mirror 8,252 2,781 11,033 +33.7
Daily Mirror/Sunday
Mirror 9,996 2,665 12,660 +26.7
Daily Mirror/Sunday
Mirror/The People 10,639 2,640 13,279 +24.8
Daily Record 1,667 821 2,488 +49.3
Daily Record/Sunday
Mail 2,024 802 2,826 +39.6
Daily Star 3,927 414 4,341 +10.5
Daily Star/Daily Star
Sunday 4,408 412 4,821 +9.3
The Sun 15,213 2,205 17,418 +14.5

Video Pre-roll Revenue-Sharing:
• “80% of internet users worldwide watch online video”
(Video Aptitude)
• However, many sites wanting to introduce video face
several obstacles:
– Cost of sourcing the content
– Cost of production
– Cost of hosting / bandwidth
• = less video being available online in the crucial first stage
of development of online journalism: trying out new
content to attract new audiences online.

Video Pre-roll revenue-sharing:
• 11 years ago a company in the Netherlands called zoomin
pioneered a business model aimed at:
– breaking down such barriers and concerns
– facilitating the first stage of online video development for news
web sites.
• How?
– aggregate video content from producers
– take care of production
– make it available to web sites on a 3-way revenue share basis:
one third for the site, one third for zoom in and one third for the
content originator, such as AP.
• model is now mature and operates in 26 markets,
producing in 14 languages, and serving over 1600 web
sites.

“The Sun-filled Uplands of Opportunity:”
• multimedia-production:
– interactive story-telling that engages the
audience,
– maximises current technologies
– Creates unique content
– Maintains and builds on existing brand loyalty
– Drives revenue through pay-walls and/or CPMs

The Result?
• By comparison, in Britain last year, people
who visited newspaper websites on
average spent only around one and a half
minutes looking at them per day

A way forward?
• Believe in the value of the brand and the
destination site
• Protect your copyright but embrace the
power of social media to drive back traffic
• Be creative, not restrictive, with paywalls
• Produce unique multimedia content to
build brand value
This project was funded, in part, through U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations
expressed herein are those of the Author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State.

The Result?
• In the 6 days following Snow Fall’s launch
on December 20th
, 2012, it had received
more than 3.5 million page views and 2.9m
visitors, nearly a third of whom were new
visitors to the Times web site.
• They were quickly hooked: users spent
around 12 minutes, often more, engaged
with the project.

A way forward?
• Work with streaming specialists to add
video at manageable cost
• Use video in a way that returns significant
revenue and protects the brand
• Investigate sponsorship models for content
• Become less dependent on SEO and banner
CPMs

A way forward?
Keep and grow your audience and revenues
This project was funded, in part, through U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations
expressed herein are those of the Author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State.

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