Guest blog by Nick Harrison
According to Friday’s TechCrunch article, The New York Times Kindle subscriptions are increasing by 46 percent to $19.99. And they are charging 17.29 for iPad subscriptions.
It is old news that beginning in 2011, The New York Times will be charging for online content. More than a week ago it was also reported that News Corp’s UK times would charge, according to Reuters, 1 pound ($1.49) per day or 2 pounds per week. It would be complimentary to print subscribers.
My first reaction at the time was, if you are already losing subscriptions and advertising dollars, is actually charging for content the best strategy?
According to a WashingtonPost.com article on January 21st, The New York Times was averaging 20 million unique visitors per month. That may sound like a lot to some people, but when you factor in current advertising rates, the payroll and expenditures, it comes to no shock that The New York Times is in the red like a lot of other online newspapers.
I think online advertising rates are going to continue to drop. Not only from the lack of advertisers, but because you don’t need the geo-targeting or the newspaper demographic as in the past. I used to always run online advertising campaigns with the Los Angeles Times, because I was focusing on people in California with a certain demographic. Now with Google, Bing, Facebook, and several other online avenues, I, like other advertisers, am able to target key demographics like never before. With the amount of people now going all over the place to get their news, as an advertiser, my advertising budget is spread around, not only is it more spread around now, most clients are spending far less for traditional media and focusing on social media type efforts.
[poll id=”3″]