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I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

kirkville.com

151–160 of 192 posts

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#151

When I was young my family paid for cable TV when the rest of the neighborhood still had antennas on their roofs because pay TV didn't have commercials. Now I pay for cable TV and it's jammed full of commercials. The idea that free online services aren't really free because we pay with our attention and with our data is only half true. Paid online services also take our data and increasingly interrupt us with adverti…

And we have TV shows with built-in ads (esp sports), and channels running promos in the bottom right corner.

I guess were not saturated quite yet...

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#152
post #135

Some numbers for perspective [1]: Digital-only subscription revenue in 2017: $340 million Digital advertising revenue in 2017: $238 million Obviously some digital advertising is shown to print subscribers logging in too... but if we ignore that for simplicity, without ads your NYT digital subscription would be 70% more expensive. At $195/yr. for digital-only, it's already my most expensive subscription by a significa…

> Digital advertising revenue in 2017: $238 million Is this from advertising to paid subscribers only, or to paid and free both? If it is the latter, your math may be off by orders of magnitude.

Good point. But since there's a paywall of 5 articles per month, while a subscriber presumably reads 100's per month (e.g. even just 5 articles a day = 150/month), it seems reasonable the majority of advertising revenue comes from subscribers, or close to it.

Sure there are viral articles that get bigger traction, and it's a "soft" paywall when coming from social media or search, but they're been significantly increasing restrictions on the soft paywall over the past year to impose both daily and monthly limits.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#153
post #135

Some numbers for perspective [1]: Digital-only subscription revenue in 2017: $340 million Digital advertising revenue in 2017: $238 million Obviously some digital advertising is shown to print subscribers logging in too... but if we ignore that for simplicity, without ads your NYT digital subscription would be 70% more expensive. At $195/yr. for digital-only, it's already my most expensive subscription by a significa…

Here are some more recent numbers [1]: Quarter 1 2018: $414m total revenue $260m subscription revenue (62% of total) $154m non-subscription revenue (38% of total) $46.7m digital advertising revenue (37% of total advertising revenue) $126.2m total advertising revenue If you cut digital advertising completely, not just for subscribers, you could make it up by increasing subscription price by around 10%, assuming 100% o…

Not sure I follow. If you're using 46.7/260 that's an 18% increase (not 10%), but that's all subscribers (including print), not just digital.

So a yearly print subscription would go from $422.50 to $500 here in New York.

I'm not sure print subscribers would want to subsidize digital readers like that, especially when their own print edition is already chock-full of ads.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#154
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some more recent numbers [1]: Quarter 1 2018: $414m total revenue $260m subscription revenue (62% of total) $154m non-subscription revenue (38% of total) $46.7m digital advertising revenue (37% of total advertising revenue) $126.2m total advertising revenue If you cut digital advertising completely, not just for subscribers, you could make it up by increasing subscription price by around 10%, assuming 100% o…

Not sure I follow. If you're using 46.7/260 that's an 18% increase (not 10%), but that's all subscribers (including print), not just digital. So a yearly print subscription would go from $422.50 to $500 here in New York. I'm not sure print subscribers would want to subsidize digital readers like that, especially when their own print edition is already chock-full of ads.

Now that I look back at it, I have no idea how I came up with that percentage.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads on the back of he seat in an airplane are very common in European airlines. One of the most obnoxious, intrusive, literally in-your-face ads as it’s 40cm from one’s face with no real option to get away from it.

I've flown LH, BA and FI in Europe this year and don't recall any back of seat adverts There are some in the on board magazines I suppose, I don't read them though, why would I?

I even flew RyanAir, which I would expect to do something like this, and don't remember seeing the ads either.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#156
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you ever notice that your in-flight magazine has ads? Yes. And on a recent trip to India, it got even worse. SpiceJet (domestic airlines) has ads on the back of the headrest of EVERY SEAT. Physical paper printed Ads! So you are staring at it for the entirety of your trip. I kid you not.

This is common worldwide, I think. Ryanair in Europe and Spirit in the US come to mind. Spirit actually sells ads on everything it seems, even on the exterior of the plane: https://skift.com/2014/03/11/spirit-airlines-brings-advertis...

Maybe it's just the flight I was on, but I don't remember seeing ads on RyanAir on either of my flights this summer.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public media and TV in Europe, including the one with the largest budget on the entire planet - German, play and display ads even though are sponsored from compulsory per-household fees.

The BBC often congratulates itself on not showing ads. Instead, every radio show is 50% 'trailers' for other BBC things which you'll hear half a dozen times by the end of a workday.

That seems to be exactly how SiriusXM is set up in the States. I hear about their other shoes all the time.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the New York Times latest earnings call, subscriptions account for 2/3 of their revenue. So ballpark roughly 50% more than the current subscription price would be necessary to maintain revenue at the same subscriber count sans other revenue streams.

Don't think that's quite the right calculation. Revenue = subscriber revenue + ad revenue from ads shown to subscribers + ad revenue from ads shown to non-subscribers The suggestions was to eliminate the middle piece and increase the subscription price to make up for it in the first piece. That's still leaves the last piece.

No. The times only allows readers to read 5 articles before signing up, meaning they're effectively subscribers only.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#159

There are ads in the paper newspaper I subscribe to as well. Real reporting and quality writing don't come cheaply, and that hasn't changed just because the delivery method did. Probably neither the author nor I would be willing to pay for a subscription without ad subsidies.

>Real reporting and quality writing unfortunately I rarely see either of those in any news outlet. Most of it is regurgitated press releases and things that I don't care about.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#160

Hulu, to me, has the perfect model: limited content for free, full content with ads for a subscription fee, full content with no ads for a (slightly) higher subscription fee.

I thought Hulu quit free streams a few years ago?
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