Are leaky paywalls always a bad thing?
PLUS: Hollywood streamers don’t necessarily have to compete with YouTube.
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Are leaky paywalls always a bad thing?
A group of researchers studied how consumers react when they encounter paywalls and found that about 10% of them figure out a way to bypass the paywall completely:
They tracked cases where a user viewed the same article twice in quick succession — once triggering the paywall and once not — from what appeared to be the same user (based on IP address, user agent, and other signals).
This “article-as-anchor” method shed light on paywall evasion even when cookies were refreshed or deleted.
“Tracking browser cookies doesn’t work for detecting paywall circumvention because many circumvention methods generate a new cookie,” explained Professor Eric Overby from Georgia Tech.
So about 10% of visitors are using methods to get around a paywall. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Just because someone gets past a paywall doesn't mean they produce no value. It's still possible to serve them ads, and they're more likely to evangelize your content so it reaches more people. For instance, while I pay a lot for news subscriptions — at least $2,000 a year — I also regularly utilize tools to bypass paywalls and share links to that content within my newsletter.
Of course, there are ways to prevent people from bypassing your paywall, but it also involves making it impossible for sites like Google to properly index your content. A stricter paywall likely drives up conversion rates but makes it more difficult for a publisher to grow its audience.
And let's say you are comfortable with 10% of your audience bypassing your paywall; what happens if the public becomes more educated on these methods and the number bumps up to 20% or even 30%? At some point the paywall leakage would grow so high that publishers would have no choice but to tighten the restrictions.
More legacy publishers test out paywalled podcasts
Axios reports that the Atlantic is incorporating paid podcasts into its subscription strategy:
The feed will feature narrated magazine stories as they are published, which complements the outlet's broader editorial strategy of expanded magazine features …
Subscribers will also get select ad-free episodes of popular Atlantic podcasts like "Holy Week" and "Floodlines."
The new partnership will prompt listeners who discover The Atlantic on Apple Podcasts but are not currently subscribed to the publication via the iOS app. Existing subscribers will be prompted to connect their subscriptions via The Atlantic's website.
Paid podcasts are probably close to being a billion dollar industry — Patreon alone is paying podcasters $472 million a year — and yet legacy publishers have only recently experimented with putting podcasts behind a paywall. It seems like a no-brainer to me to add this as an extra benefit to an already-existing subscription offering.
The WSJ experiments in becoming Davos-lite
The Wall Street Journal has gradually built out a stable of what are essentially networking groups for executives, some costing as much as $25,000 a year to join. It's kind of a mix between a Davos and a trade organization. Combined, these WSJ networking “councils” have 750 members, which means they could be generating upwards of $19 million in just membership revenue alone:
The flagship CEO Council remains the largest, with 358 members, followed by smaller communities of CFOs, CIOs, compliance officers, and now, board directors and chief people officers.
The programs cater to highly senior executives and include access to in-person summits, global dinners, virtual roundtables, and off-the-record conversations designed to facilitate peer-to-peer learning.
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Another worker-owned media cooperative enters the chat
The video game review site Giant Bomb announced it’s been purchased by its own workers from Fandom, the corporate parent that was otherwise planning to shut it down:
"Giant Bomb is now owned by the people who make Giant Bomb, and it would not have been possible without the speedy efforts of Fandom and our mutual agreement on what’s best for fans and creators", a joint statement issued by new owners Jeff Bakalar and Jeff Grubb says. "The future of Giant Bomb is now in the hands of our supporting community, who have always had our backs no matter what. We'll have a lot more to say about what this looks like soon, but for now, everyone can trust that all the support we receive goes directly to this team."
It's always great to see another worker-owned media outlet out in the wild and even cooler that these journalists were able to take ownership over the website they were working for. It's pretty common for media conglomerates to shutter unprofitable outlets and lay off the entire staff, and it'd be cool if it became more common for these companies to sell the domain and archives to the people being laid off.
The challenges of building a global streaming subscriber base
Hollywood streamers consistently face a conundrum when it comes to international markets: try to expand their streaming services into a particular country or simply license content to the already-existing broadcasters in that country? While there are massive populations in places like India and Thailand, the low average household income makes it incredibly difficult for a streamer to generate any profit:
In Japan, Paramount+ is offered as a stand-alone. Max is available on its own in Spain, as another example. But in markets where there’s less upside to running an owned-and-operated platform, like Thailand, Paramount licenses to local operators, in that case Monomax—a local streamer with approximately 1.5 million subscribers, per financial filings. Paramount has pursued a similar strategy in Greece, Belgium, parts of Africa, and India. Max is working with Foxtel in Australia, Sky in the U.K., and Canal+ in France.
ICYMI: How Local News Now built its loyal audience
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Behind the paywall
Here’s what I have on deck for paid subscribers:
Hollywood streamers don’t necessarily have to compete with YouTube
Can the Netflix strategy work with independent movies?
Shari Redstone is in competition for worst media mogul title
Why Substack is becoming a fiction destination
Let’s jump into it…