Paid-for digital content catching on: study
A new study finds that, while still off a low base, the number of people who are prepared to pay for digital content is on the rise across the globe.
While the study does not include South Africa, global trends are useful as local media houses look to try to emulate their overseas counterparts.
A number of local publishing houses have turned to a paywall model in recent months amid a poor online advertising landscape where digital commands just 3% of the total ad spend in South Africa.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report found that while 50% of its global sample said they had bought a printed newspaper in the last week, 5% said they had paid for digital news in the same time period.
This, the report argued, is partly because the majority of online newspapers still do not charge for news – although that is changing rapidly with the erection of paywalls, combined subscriptions, and app-based purchases.
Reuters, however, pointed out that since its inaugural report in 2012, “we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of respondents paying for online news – albeit from a low base”.
Participating countries included the UK, US, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark and Brazil.
Number paying for digital news
In terms of who is prepared to pay for digital news, older groups are most reluctant to pay for digital news, with 25–34 year olds the most willing to do so across all of our countries, Reuters found.
Income is also a factor, as illustrated in France and Germany, with those households earning over €50,000 per annum around twice as likely to pay as those earning less than €30,000 a year.
In the UK, among those with a personal income of £25,000 to £50,000, a quarter are 25 to 34, suggesting that this age group is more affluent and therefore willing to pay for digital content.
For those who aren’t currently paying for digital news, a significant percentage expects to pay at some point in the future. Men say they are much more likely pay than women.
What device?
While the computer remains the primary device for accessing digital news, the key underlying trend is about growth in access from multiple devices. One-third of the global sample now gets news on at least two devices and 9% use more than three.
Some devices are used more heavily for news than others. 85% of computer users say they access news on that device each week, compared with 63% of smartphone users, 60% of tablet users, 54% of smart TV users, and only 17% for the e-reader.
In the US smartphone and tablet users are significantly more likely to pay than other online news users. Even after controlling for the following variables: interest in news, age, gender, education and income, they are on average almost twice as likely to pay as those who don’t use these devices.
“We do not see the same device impact in the UK where the eco-system around paid news is less developed and there are a large number of high quality free news apps in the market,” the report’s authors said.
Types of News
Digital news is gradually moving away from the article and picture format that has dominated for almost 20 years.
Short video clips and the streaming of live news TV or radio coverage are becoming more popular. Americans consume the largest amount of short form video (27%), almost twice as much as those in the UK (14%), but when put together with podcasts and TV and radio streams almost half (47%) of the UK sample now uses news audio or video each week.
Another recent innovation has been the development of live blogs as a way of covering breaking news and sports stories.
“Some news organisations are looking to exploit niches, others are pushing for scale and paywalls are going up around the world. As ever, success will depend on a combination of clear strategies and a strong understanding of changing audience behaviours,” the authors said.
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