Participants in the Asian media focus sessions at WAN-Ifra’s World Newspaper Congress are at different stages in their paywall journey.
For Robin Hu, chief executive of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post – who moderates the session – the transition has already been made from completely paid-for to metered use.
At South Korea’s 25-platform JMnet, banner advertising is still dominant, although vice president Jeongdo Hong expects a paywall system to be important soon.
Jeongdo (pictured right) says his JoongAng Media Network taps all the conventional revenue streams, including paywalls, banner ads, mobile advertising and new advertising models such as sponsored content. “Banner ads are the major revenue source in the current digital media market,” he says. “For the time being, they are the most significant factor.”
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But he says “strong reluctance” on the part of consumers to pay for contents that are available elsewhere for free mans JMnet has to produce “valuable contents that are worth paying for.
“Although the mobile advertising market is rapidly emerging, because of its emphasis on searching, web portals reap more benefits than media companies do. “Ultimately, a paywall system with premium contents will provide the most important revenue stream in the near future for media companies,” he says.
Robin Hu says SCMP was unusual in moving from a completely paid-for model to a metered one. “The metered model, we feel, is the right model for us,” he says. “We have a metered free zone for anyone and everyone who would like to sample us. With this metered free zone, we are also searchable by search engines and referable via the social media space.
“In this day and age it is important to not be absent from search engines and from the leading social media platforms.”
SCMP has seen tremendous growth in page views, unique visitors and other major metrics: “We are now deploying this metered model as the unified gate to access our content,” he says. “Whether it’s a tablet-native app or HTML, an optimised mobile app or a web application or just a straight portal, the user will go through a similar metered gate with a free zone and a paid subscription beyond. It’s clearly not a model for everyone, but we feel it is the one model that will work for us.”
The Hong Kong publisher saw a surge in the number of subscribers after introducing the metered model. “Also, online advertising becomes a lot more viable because there is now sufficient traffic.”
SCMP is now updating its website much more often than when it was a pay site. “So with the improved product we are now seeing our subscription revenue improving significantly,” Hu says. “This year we are going to be more aggressive in the monetization of our advertising inventory.”
But he says he is thankful to still have a very strong print business. “A key reason for that is that we offer a uniquely high-quality readership. Our circulation is more than 100,000 copies a day, and our readership is about 400,000 each day,” he says. “We have a high-end demographic profile that nobody else in Hong Kong is able to provide, and we are still a very affordable platform.
“That said, we are aware of the need to diversify our delivery options which means our product options as well. That’s why we will release new products in May and July. And by the third quarter this year, we will be available on all platforms you can imagine.”