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Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#51

Post by Theodores »

ripdog wrote: post #43
mindcrime wrote: post #28

Subscriptions are just the wrong model for news publishers. There's NO way I could possibly afford to subscribe to every news output I occasionally read news from, unless the subscriptions were so close to free as to be useless as a revenue source for the publisher. It's just not going to happen. What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article. I'd be happy to pay you a f…

Micropayments for most major US news outlets already exists - check out Blendle.com. It's in closed beta right now, but works great, and invites are easy to come by. It does require you to read articles on its own website and not the original publisher's, but it's a nice clean layout. You own (a license for) articles once you pay for them. There's also fast, automated refunds if you don't like an article.

Thanks for that, not heard of them, sounds like a good business model, I wish them the best but I won't be investing.

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#52

Post by sgk284 »

mindcrime wrote: post #28

Subscriptions are just the wrong model for news publishers. There's NO way I could possibly afford to subscribe to every news output I occasionally read news from, unless the subscriptions were so close to free as to be useless as a revenue source for the publisher. It's just not going to happen. What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article. I'd be happy to pay you a f…

Unfortunately, micropayments encourage click-bait and pop-news (but that's not to say that advertising doesn't either). We've also have seen other failure modes with payment-per-article in academic journals, though payment is much larger there, so may not be a fair comparison.

In general a la carte payments usually lead to overall higher costs (e.g. Classic Blockbuster vs. Netflix).

My ideal system would be a Spotify-like system. I'd pay a flat rate for access to all news and then each organization gets a percentage of my payment proportional to the number of articles I read by them. That is, if I pay $10/mo and 50% of the things I read are on the New York Times, then they'd get $5 (ignoring margin for whatever entity manages this exchange).

I can't ever imagine news orgs opt-ing into this model though. Perhaps Apple could pull an iTunes-equivalent with Apple News?

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#53

Post by silverbax88 »

mindcrime wrote: post #28

Subscriptions are just the wrong model for news publishers. There's NO way I could possibly afford to subscribe to every news output I occasionally read news from, unless the subscriptions were so close to free as to be useless as a revenue source for the publisher. It's just not going to happen. What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article. I'd be happy to pay you a f…

That exists. It's called Blendle, and it's awesome.

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#54

Post by TheCowboy »

baldfat wrote: post #19
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #16

I happily pay for lots of services, but I just don't think many of these publishers are worth paying for. I'm pretty tired of shitty clickbait headlines, and stories which cherry-pick a handful of twitter posts to make it seem like there's outrage over something. Even worse, it seems like most publishers are dead set of trying to feed you their agenda. Why would I pay for misleading or intellectually dishonest articl…

These news paid sources are usually only valuable for local content. My local news paper' only redeeming value is it is local but it isn't $4 a week valuable.

I agree that $4*52 is expensive, but it could cost less if more people were subscribing. Unfortunately, even at a more reasonable price per month or week, I think papers wouldn't see a surge in subscribers in the current environment.

Short-term, I think people undervalue the value of local news. There are often a lot of info holes when it comes to local government and politics. I wonder if this has adverse affects that lead to less involvement in local politics except when a NIMBY issue appears, which doesn't seem like good governance.

Local news coverage, with the exception of major cities, tends to be sparse and often non-existent. Even for some major areas there can be a lot of holes in coverage.

This problem makes itself apparent to me when come election day I try to look up all of the candidates, and find no info for many of them that isn't from their own website (if it even exists).

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#55

Post by erentz »

Pxtl wrote: post #27
erentz wrote: post #9

I have no problem with this. But in return I should be able to opt out of results that I cannot view. A result for a news article that changes when I click on it to a "Please subscribe..." plea is not the result that was returned that I clicked on. Unfortunately, like the AMP fiasco, I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users.

> I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users. There intent is to serve users with quality, truthful information. If all the quality information goes out of business and gets replaced with "Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: Obama failed New Orleans during Katrina!!" then Google doesn't have any more quality information anymore. Google and Facebook are becoming acutely aware of how easily dishonest propaga…

Should Google give these providers payments in that case? It doesn't help if the first five links I get shown on Google I click only to find nothing but a pay wall. Maybe the money flow should be:

1. Google is best search engine, attracts most eyeballs looking to find content 2. Advertisers pay google to show their ads to my eyeballs 3. I use Google because it provides good, true, accurate content, when I click on a link to nytimes.com Google should pay nytimes.com a portion of the revenue they collected

Almost, kinda, makes sense maybe? Or maybe this'll be the revenue model for a post-Google source of information.

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#56

Post by QAPereo »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #16

I happily pay for lots of services, but I just don't think many of these publishers are worth paying for. I'm pretty tired of shitty clickbait headlines, and stories which cherry-pick a handful of twitter posts to make it seem like there's outrage over something. Even worse, it seems like most publishers are dead set of trying to feed you their agenda. Why would I pay for misleading or intellectually dishonest articl…

Agreed... a paywall just means that the minimal interest I had drops to 0.

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Flammy wrote: post #41
NeutronBoy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article The other side of the coin is that if you're a news organisation, "the economics just don't work" with micro payments. You can't fund a month long investigative report based on micropayments, even if it produces a prize-winning piece, if you don't have guaranteed income to support it. What happens if you spend the month in…

> Micro-payment per-article will only encourage "safe" journalism - articles that you know will resonate with your readers, rather than controversial pieces or in-depth, resource intensive research. I actually disagree, from what has happened when trying ads ads (basically micropayments in terms of $ amount per view), we get click bait and sensationalist headlines for any news source which focuses on income-per-artic…

[deleted]

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#59

Post by yoz-y »

erentz wrote: post #9

I have no problem with this. But in return I should be able to opt out of results that I cannot view. A result for a news article that changes when I click on it to a "Please subscribe..." plea is not the result that was returned that I clicked on. Unfortunately, like the AMP fiasco, I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users.

Hm. But if the site shows only the title and summary to google shouldn’t they index at least that ? I could technically make a Wordpress site that pops up a pay wall after you click on “read more” and it won’t look different to google compared to a site without one.

Re: Google Unveils Tools to Increase Subscriptions for Publishers

#60

Post by altcognito »

Flammy wrote: post #41
NeutronBoy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article The other side of the coin is that if you're a news organisation, "the economics just don't work" with micro payments. You can't fund a month long investigative report based on micropayments, even if it produces a prize-winning piece, if you don't have guaranteed income to support it. What happens if you spend the month in…

> Micro-payment per-article will only encourage "safe" journalism - articles that you know will resonate with your readers, rather than controversial pieces or in-depth, resource intensive research. I actually disagree, from what has happened when trying ads ads (basically micropayments in terms of $ amount per view), we get click bait and sensationalist headlines for any news source which focuses on income-per-artic…

Click bait for people that agree with it.

"See what liberals/Trump did now!"

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