Monday, 10 Octorber 2011
The Independent is to launch paid content for its readership outside of the UK in the next week.
The title will introduce an international paywall following the type of freemium model set by the Financial Times and the New York Times. Readers will be able to access 20 articles before being asked to pay.
The subscription platform, Press+, will be offered to US and Canadian readers first, at $6.99 a month. A couple of hundred thousand “loyal” US users have been identified as willing to pay. The monthly unique browser figure for readers of independent.co.uk outside of the UK stands at almost 9m, according to ABC for August.
MD, digital, The Independent, Zach Leonard said the platform would be one that would “preserve the ad benefit”, in addition to reaping a subscription fee from readers.
“There’s a high degree of loyalty from US readers and we needed a system to allow us to preserve the ad benefit,” he said. “We didn’t want to cut that off. Press+ allows us to set thresholds and change the dials over time.”
The title is also poised to launch a subscription iPad app, almost a year after introducing a subscription iPad app for its spin-off, i, priced free for five issues; 10 for £1.79 and 20 issues for £2.99 (nma.co.uk 4 November 2011).
Though prices have yet to be confirmed, Leonard said the app will be a seven-day product at a single price, with a monthly subscription price of £9.99 or higher. There will also be a free trial period of a minimum 30 days.
The iPad app content, which is based on the New York Times’ app platform Press Engine, will offer 95% of what is available in print, though it will be “topped up” with picture galleries, longer articles and eventually video.
“We won’t launch video for several weeks,” said Leonard. “The platform is one that can continuously release upgrades.”
The Independent is one of a growing number of national titles exploring paid content through apps.
Although The Guardian is free online, it’s planning a subscription iPad app, set to launch imminently. Other titles including Telegraph and Mirror Group have also been mooting paid content in various ways. The Telegraph was understood to be considering a metered paywall approach last year, while Mirror Group was paving the way to charge readers for its content online by building loyalty through social gaming. It was looking into a range of options for growth, including testing appetite for paid-for content around its sport and entertainment verticals, 3am and Mirror Football.
Janet Robinson, CEO of the New York Times Company, which introduced a paywall in March, previously told new media age that the emergence of apps meant that people are getting used to buying news and information in a variety of download formats.
“We’ve seen with apps playing such an important part in everyone’s lives, and people paying via PayPal or other platforms, paying for content seems to be gaining ground. It makes that transition somewhat easier,” Robinson said.
In July, The New York Times revealed it had more than 1m digital subscribers, while The Times in the UK claimed it has more than 100,000 paying digital subscribers, one year on from introducing a paywall.
