Is "Times of London" Paywall a Success?

News Corp. says it has gotten 105,000 paying customers to the digital versions of "The Times" and "The Sunday Times of London" since it started charging for access to their Web sites in June 2010. Of course, the paper's website used to get three million unique viewers a month.

The company said “around half” of these were regular, active subscribers to the newspapers’ Web sites, iPad application or Amazon Kindle edition. The rest are occasional purchasers. Another 100,000 readers have activated free digital accounts that are included in print subscriptions to the papers, News Corp. said.

When it switched to a paid model, News Corp. estimated that the number of visitors to The Times and Sunday Times Web sites would drop by 90 percent.

In fact, traffic appears to have fallen by somewhat less. Nielsen, the media audience measurement agency, said last week that the average number of monthly unique visitors to the newspapers’ Web sites from Britain had fallen by 42 percent, to 1.78 million, in the third quarter, after the pay wall went up.

You have to draw your own conclusions about which model--paywall or not--makes more sense for a content provider. To the extent that News Corp. expected a 90-percent drop of visitors, the 42-percent drop is better than expected. But News Corp. also has an advantage: it publishes media such as the Wall Street Journal that arguably have high value and a readership for whom subscription prices are not generally an issue. That will not be case for most other print media.

Roughly 50,000 web-only paid subscription readers might be considered a success, or not, depending on how highly a media firm values reach and readership that create ad revenue, compared to direct subscription revenues that could come at the expense of ad potential.

Times of London Reports More Than 100,000 Paying Customers for Web Site - NYTimes.com

Tablet Market Share: iPad Dominates

Apple's iPad has jumpstarted the market and rapidly captured 95 percent global share during the third quarter of 2010.

However, Apple's huge lead will be shortlived, as a wave of Android models is set to flood the market in the fourth quarter, says Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston.

There might once have been some doubt about whether tablet devices would succeed as a distinct product category, or as a segment of the notebook PC market, or something else. Perhaps the most important conclusion so far is that consumers like the devices, and that there does seem to be demand, whether as a substitute for existing products or as a brand new product category.

If that is the case, rival suppliers are not going to sit around and watch Apple grab 90 percent global share, as it has done in the MP3 player market, or significant share, as it has done in the smartphone market.

Global Tablet Vendor Market Share

Enterprises Dominate Mobile Ad Spending

More than a third of interactive marketers have implemented or plan to pilot mobile search and display advertising in the next year, according to Forrester Research analyst Melissa Parrish. And just about everyone believes such spending will grow.

For that reason, Forrester Research expects that interactive marketer spending on mobile search and display will grow at a 28 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years.

Forrester expects that mobile Internet usage will increase at a compound annual rate of 12.7 percent, with 117 million people — 36 percent of the US population — searching and browsing while using their mobile devices by 2015, Parrish says.

Mobile marketing opportunities will grow as more people use the mobile Internet, of course. At the end of 2007, only 10 percent of U.S. adult subscribers used the mobile Internet. In 2010, mobile Internet usage is up to 27 percent of mobile subscribers, representing 64 million consumers in the
United States market.

Mobile Internet users also are learning to use their mobiles to make purchases. And they aren’t just looking for the nearest coffee house; they’re buying airline tickets, researching cars, and receiving coupons for products like coffee or detergent.

Forrester forecasts that mobile search and display dollars will grow to $2.8 billion by 2015, at a
28 percent CAGR.

But critical mass still is lacking. Though mobile Internet usage is increasing rapidly, marketers still can’t get enough eyeballs on content to justify spending big bucks in the space, says Parrish.

Currently, 78 percent of the US population access the Internet at least monthly while only 21 percent access the mobile Internet. By 2015, mobile Internet usage is expected to reach 43 percent of total desktop Internet usage, making the mobile medium a much more viable channel.

Inability to track performance against spend. More than half of interactive marketers feel they have no capability to measure the ROI or brand impact of their mobile marketing campaigns.

Interactive marketers prefer performance-based campaigns and are willing to pay more for these metrics. Vendors like Google and Bing offer cost-per-click pricing for click-to-call and click-to-get-directions type activities, but mobile display is still largely based on potential impressions, an unsatisfactory metric to most marketers.

Additionally, the holy grail of mobile is location-based marketing, but it’s still unclear how the connection between location-marketing efforts and in-store purchases will occur. Vendors must develop the tools for marketers to track performance and then help marketers understand the value and how to use these new tools.

·Spending by small and mid-sized business is not having too much impact, says Parrish. Forrester’s data suggests that fully 95 percent of mobile advertising dollars currently come from companies with more than $100 million in revenue.

Though the value of mobile advertising is highly relevant to small and mid-sized businesses, which benefit greatly from local and location-specific advertising, smaller budgets and less marketing
expertise will make the percentage of overall spend from SMBs consistently less than eight percent of total mobile spend.

Concerns over privacy, specifically location and carrier information, could provoke a backlash among consumers, leading to some caution as well. Consumers consider mobile phones personal devices to a greater extent than PCs and, for that reason, might continue to expect greater privacy in a mobile context, Parrish suggests.

Faster Upstream Cable Speeds Arriving In 2011

The first incarnation of the cable broadband DOCSIS 3.0 standard is theoretically capable of 160 Mbps downstream, and 100 Mbps upstream, on a shared basis. But upstream channel bonding has been hard to perfect, some would note.

For that reason, cable broadband tiers like 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps upstream, or even in some cases 100 Mbps downstream and just 2 Mbps upstream. Such problems tend to get resolved over time, and new gear might be part of the solution.

Faster Upstream Cable Speeds Arriving In 2011

Will Streaming Displace More Radio Listening?

A new study of 12 to 24 year-old Americans reports Internet usage of two hours and fifty-two minutes per day, roughly triple this age group's reported usage from 2000 (59 minutes).

Radio continues to be the medium most often used for music discovery, with 51 percent of those 12 to 24 reporting that they frequently find out about new music by listening to the radio. 

Other significant sources include friends (46 percent), YouTube (31 percent) and social networking sites (16 percent). Some 20 percent of users 12 to 24 have listened to streaming radio provider Pandora in the last month, with 13 percent indicating usage in the past week. 

By comparison, six percent of those 12 to 24  indicate they have listened to online streams from terrestrial AM or FM stations in the past week.

It is difficult to predict how overall radio listening might change as these users grow older, since much U.S. radio consumption occurs while people are in their cars commuting to and from work. 

The American Youth Study 2010 - Radio's Future

Apple Looking at Mobile Payments?

Apple is among companies just about anybody might argue is in position to make mobile payments more mainstream. Apple already handles payments through iTunes, which boasts 160 million active credit card accounts. PayPal only has 90 million, by way of example.

Of course, such micropayments for online goods are not the same thing as use of a mobile for retail transactions in place of a credit or debit card. But online micropayments could create an important habit that prepares the way for use of an Apple mobile device for other types of transactions.

Apple’s Next Big Strategic Opportunity Could Be Mobile Payments

IBM Looks at The Social Workplace

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As you would expect, younger workers have different expectations about social networking in the workplace.