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Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#41

Post by nl »

TheFro wrote: post #28
hitonagashi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, reading the news is a very important part of my day. I always feel slightly uncomfortable when reading Guardian/Telegraph, almost certainly because the Times aligns with my political spectrum much closer. The cost is worth the fact that I find the articles much more...enjoyable(I'm not entirely sure that's the best word!). Connection problems aside, I have been satisfied with the service. If I hadn't been a Ti…

aligns with my political spectrum much closer. So you want to continue to read content from a media outlet that has an agenda from a particular political perspective AND you consider this an important part of your day. I'm sorry but I have to respectfully disagree with your methods of thinking. Doesn't this make you blind to anything else out there?

I think it's honest of him to say that.

I'm not sure what your political views are, but if you are left-leaning, how much Fox News do you watch? If you tend towards the right then do you read The Guardian and/or HuffPost?

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#42

Post by bradshaw1965 »

axod wrote: post #9
fookyong wrote: post #8

I'm calling a spade a spade. 100,000 people is pathetic. Note that this is not subscribers - this is "the total amount of people who have paid in one way or another". 50,000 of those are subscribers, which in PR-speak probably means "people who have subscribed" i.e. not the current amount of subscribers. With an in-built audience of over a million in circulation, plus a reach that goes far beyond that, an ad campaign…

And who in their right mind would pay £1 for a 'one day pass'? This isn't porn, it's just news.

porn has much, much less value then a lot of information. Supply and demand, and the supply of porn is seemingly endless.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#43

Post by robryan »

varjag wrote: post #38
robryan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know this? You would need to see the change in advertising revenue between before this was implemented and now. You also have to factor in the rate of growth in readership to before and after.

I don't know that, but they probably do know themselves. They claim it to be net success, and the only contrary theory out there is they must be rigging numbers. Unless you're Doctorow you'd want some evidence for that.

Well without a way to independently check this kind of thing there is no way to know I guess, it's pretty easy to make the statistics work in your favor to explain later why you could have said something was a success when it wasn't.

Great example is SyFy channel show ratings, they put out press releases focusing on certain measures in which certain eps of shows performed favorably even if overall the ratings aren't that good.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#44

Post by johnmmix »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #35
Nekojoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The BBC have more analysis here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010... The figure also includes Apple iTunes Store App purchases and Kindle subscriptions. But they're not broken down. For all we know 3 people could have bought direct access to the website and the other 99,997 people could have bought the App to read something on their iPhone while taking the train to work. It's int…

His figures may not be right though. I've seen other articles quote much lower figures than the £40m - closer to £25m ( http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-is-financial-times-the-... ). For comparison that article also quotes that at the time the Times was pulling in £15m - £18m from on-line ad revenue. Part of the reason for the difference is that The Guardian on-line audience is larger and generally more engaged t…

The Times iPad app is currently free - I think it has been for a while - so it may be that people are downloading it for the 30 day trial, with no intention of continuing when the charge kicks in, so possibly it's not going to be a big revenue generator in terms of subs or advertising.

It may be that these free iPad downloads aren't included in the figure of 105k "sales" - I can't tell from any of the coverage I've seen.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#45

Post by johnmmix »

axod wrote: post #9
fookyong wrote: post #8

I'm calling a spade a spade. 100,000 people is pathetic. Note that this is not subscribers - this is "the total amount of people who have paid in one way or another". 50,000 of those are subscribers, which in PR-speak probably means "people who have subscribed" i.e. not the current amount of subscribers. With an in-built audience of over a million in circulation, plus a reach that goes far beyond that, an ad campaign…

And who in their right mind would pay £1 for a 'one day pass'? This isn't porn, it's just news.

I suspect it's there in large part as a psychological "trick" to make the £2 charge for a week seem good value in comparison, and thus - in theory - make people be more inclined to sign up for that.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#46

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

pix30 wrote: post #17

These numbers seem totally PR-ified. "The figures include subscribers to the print version of the papers who receive an online subscription as a result." So some of those people who they are counting as having "subscribed" to the paywalled content might not even have an internet connection. What are the total number of print subscribers? Im guessing it's a pretty large proportion of that figure.

This is actually an issue in the reporting rather than their figures.

The statement made it clear that 100,000 is the subscribers who have activated the digital element of their subscription (about 70% of the total possible).

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#47

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

Nekojoe wrote: post #25
fookyong wrote: post #8

I'm calling a spade a spade. 100,000 people is pathetic. Note that this is not subscribers - this is "the total amount of people who have paid in one way or another". 50,000 of those are subscribers, which in PR-speak probably means "people who have subscribed" i.e. not the current amount of subscribers. With an in-built audience of over a million in circulation, plus a reach that goes far beyond that, an ad campaign…

I agree. The BBC have more analysis here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010... The figure also includes Apple iTunes Store App purchases and Kindle subscriptions. But they're not broken down. For all we know 3 people could have bought direct access to the website and the other 99,997 people could have bought the App to read something on their iPhone while taking the train to work. It's int…

Two more analysis:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/nov/02/tim...

http://www.beehivecity.com/newspapers/times-paywall-105000-d...

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#48

Post by chollida1 »

axod wrote: post #9
fookyong wrote: post #8

I'm calling a spade a spade. 100,000 people is pathetic. Note that this is not subscribers - this is "the total amount of people who have paid in one way or another". 50,000 of those are subscribers, which in PR-speak probably means "people who have subscribed" i.e. not the current amount of subscribers. With an in-built audience of over a million in circulation, plus a reach that goes far beyond that, an ad campaign…

And who in their right mind would pay £1 for a 'one day pass'? This isn't porn, it's just news.

My guess would be, the same people who pay £1 for a 'one day newspaper'. I can't think of another group that would be more likely to do so.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#49

Post by corin_ »

pclark wrote: post #20

I wonder how many of these users paid for news because they didn't realize they could go elsewhere? My Dad rang me a few years ago and was like "hey, just bought iTunes, do they email me a download link?" and I was confused - what did he mean bought? It's free from Apple. Turns out he google'd "iTunes download" and clicked the first result (an adword) and paid £25 for iTunes. I later actually met a guy that ran this…

I think it's less likely. My grandmother wouldn't have heard of iTunes, or know what an "mp3" is, so if she learned about it she wouldn't realise it was just one of multiple options.

However she does know that there's more than one national paper in the UK.

Re: Times and Sunday Times reveal online reader figures

#50

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Nekojoe wrote: post #22
mahmud wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid up to $150/day for 1-day passes for some sort of "news". You have no idea how much it costs to get certain types of "news". Try getting streaming broadcasts for 99% of the conferences that are not computing related. It's nigh near impossible and it costs much.

The difference is that the Times and Sunday Times are aimed at the public. There's plenty of competition and free on-line quality alternatives in the UK from the BBC News Website and the Guardian. What I'm interested to see is how other sites traffic went up as people left the Times site as the pay wall was put up. I'll bet the type of news you're willing to pay for isn't aimed at the general public. I reckon sites t…

>What I'm interested to see is how other sites traffic went up as people left the Times site as the pay wall was put up.

I can give you a single data point - I used to read The Times online most days, not generally very much. I'd skip to the letters to sample the public mood, pick the top stories and view the World and UK front pages. I have missed it, but I can't afford to pay, i.e. it's not a high enough priority to warrant the money (but I'm an outlier with respect to payment power).

I use Google News now, kinda. It doesn't really hit the mark, I do occasionally look at other papers - Guardian, Telegraph, Mail (rarely), Independent - but generally I'm relying on social sites to get news. I miss The Times, I grew up reading it, but Google News is OK along with one of the other broadsheets.

Somehow the BBC never really hits the mark, I find their bias a bit annoying too. I do read news there about once a fortnight and find their news reviews to be very thorough.

Worst data point ever, probably.

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