Western European newspapers and their online revenue models: An overview

Abstract

This paper analyses the Web sites of 82 national daily newspapers in eight Western European countries, in order to determine their online revenue models. Overall, 80.5 per cent of our newspapers try to monetise (part of) their online content in direct ways. In doing so, the bulk of the paying sites rely on 'traditional’ online subscriptions rather than unbundled access options although 43.9 per cent of all sites offer both, and in this way target regular as well as occasional readers. However, the low cut-off points between the online subscriptions and pay-per-view seem to indicate that our newspapers have embraced pay-per-view only half-heartedly. We also find that newspapers that adopt ‘mixed bundling’ have a higher fear of channel spill-over between the online and print subscription. The same is true for smaller newspapers. An important finding is also that for all the strategic decisions that we analyse, there are dramatic inter-country differences. This suggests that local market circumstances – such as the relative importance of advertising revenues, Internet penetration, and even mimicking behaviour – play a major role.

Print and online newspapers as material artefacts

“…Schiff, 2003). For many years, these media groups have made a loss, many are still in search of revenues today as the great fragmentation of the business models applied and the wide crosscultural differences between these business models show (Bleyen and Van Hove, 2007). It follows that a faulty business model has also been applied by some traditional media groups declaring the end of the print edition and keeping only the online edition.…”

A Taxonomy of Newspapers based on Multi-Platform and Paid Content Strategies: Evidences from Spain

“…One of the most prominent examples is the Financial Times that launched the metered model in October 2007. 6 Choosing between these different options is one of the crucial steps in the strategic decisions that emerge when newspapers offer online content (Bleyen & Van Hove, 2007). However, reaching the largest potential audience and thereby benefiting from economies of scale and scope requires the distribution across various channels.…”

“…Mainly, two aspects are focused: (1) business and revenue models of online newspapers (e.g., Nel, 2010;Picard, 2000;Steinbock, 2000;Bleyen & Van Hove, 2007Thurman & Herbert, 2007;Chyi & Sylvie, 2009;Goyanes, 2013aGoyanes, , 2013b and (2) factors that influence the willingness to pay for online news content (e.g., Chyi, 2005Chyi, , 2012Chyi & Lee, 2013;). Yet, there appears to be a lack of empirical studies on traditional newspapers' strategies involving paid content across multiple platforms as most of these prior studies either concentrate on one particular distribution platform (e.g., newspaper websites) in order to analyze different revenue models (e.g., Bleyen & Van Hove, 2007 and thus do not take into account all digital distribution channels and target devices (such as mobile phones, tablets, etc.) or they do not include traditional newspapers in their analysis.…”

An Empirical Study of Factors that Influence the Willingness to Pay for Online News

“…According to the Pew Research Center (2013a), digital pay plans are being adopted at 450 of the country's 1380 dailies and appear to be working not just in major US news organisations (like The New York Times) but also at small and mid-sized papers (Mitchell 2013). However, the newspaper industry's efforts to refinance its production through paid content clash with readers' stated unwillingness to pay for digital goods (Chyi and Sylvie 2009;Bleyen and Van Hove 2007). As BCG (2009) suggested, the maximum amount of money people are willing to pay for online news is very modest, around $5 a month, while only 2 per cent would be prepared to pay for unrestricted access to a website they currently use regularly if a paywall was introduced (KPMG 2010).…”