Revenue Challenges for News Publishers and a Pure Sponsorship Solution

Factors driving these challenges includeConsolidation and loss of independence due to the purchase of news publications by new owners with other business andor political interests which has sidelined the historic role of the free pressThe laying off of journalists to maintain profits Running articles written elsewhere without the attention to local government news politics and even sports is often a way to replace reportercreated content The smaller the market the more common this isFragmented streams of low eCPM ad revenue driven by automated ad buying have compromised a oncethriving dual revenue streamSubscriptions are important but 90 to 95 of visitors to subscription sites do not subscribe according to 2024 data extrapolated from Statista and selfreported data from The New York Times Wall Street Journal and the Washington PostAdvertisers are avoiding news environments due to amp8220brand safetyamp8221 concerns A recent Prohaska Consulting study amp8220The Rebranding of Newsamp8221 identified that one in three US advertisers have been told at some point to block the news categoryDiscontent with current subscription marketing efforts is high A recent Turnstil TwitterX poll showed that when asked quotWhat would you do when you hit an internet paywall that asks you to subscribeamp8221 934 of respondents said they would rather have an advertiser pay their way inCurrent approaches where the offer to amp8220subscribeamp8221 often with a free week by providing payment card information with assurances that amp8220you can cancel at any timeamp8221 ends up costing consumers due to forgotten cancellation dates It is a marketing game consumers would rather not playSome innovative solutions to address these problems including notforprofit news publishing donationbased marketing and curated collectives of news publishers assuring brand safety have emerged with some positive results but not yet at the scale neededSo what can be done to address these challengesI was shown an innovative revenue model Turnstil for tapping the 9095 of visitors to subscription paywall sites who do not subscribe It employs an interactive ad instead of banner ads popups or prerolls to explicitly have advertisers pay the vieweramp8217s way in It offers a new way of thinking about the paywall and ad messaging in 3 waysAdvertisers pay a higher CPM because the ad canamp8217t be blocked or run by bots and interactive completion is guaranteed The advertiser facilitates rather than interrupts the content the consumer wants enjoying the amp8220heroamp8221 role with full audience engagement and attention The interactive element also allows the viewer to drive their own ad experience providing valuable aggregated data for advertisers on messagingConsumers get an easy way to view the content they have arrived at the paywall for willingly exchanging a reasonable amount of attention to an interactive ad in exchange for the advertiser amp8220payingamp8221 their way in Instant gratification via amp8220rewarded advertisingamp8221 without playing marketing games is a win for the viewerPublishers receive a higher eCPM and no longer frustrate visitors who have come to their site and are only offered two options amp8220give us your payment card information or go awayamp8221 The 9095 of visitors who remain nonsubscribers offer new revenue and consumer satisfaction at scaleAll this happens interactively at the paywall while also increasing the traffic and ad views insideThe Turnstil model operated successfully as Ultramercial before the 2008 financial crisis with over 700 campaigns 170 advertisers on 44 sites including premium publishersThis model strikes me as amp8220True Sponsorshipamp8221 an approach I wrote about in a 2006 article in the Journal of Advertising Research entitled amp8220Measuring The Effect of True Sponsorshipamp8221 My colleagues and I attempted to quantify the value of sponsorship by analyzing twentyeight random control trial studies conducted for leading advertisers to measure the persuasion of sponsorship on the internet We found that average lift in purchase intentbrand consideration was 29 percent which compares to an average lift of 4 percent across all ARS Persuasion Tests TV commercialsThe study showed that advertising appears to work by causing improvements directly in brand perception whereas sponsorship appears to work by causing improvement directly in the perception of the sponsoring company and often indirectly by a halo effect in the brand perception And even when brand perception is not affected sponsorship can increase purchase intent apparently as a result of gratitude toward the sponsor In the summary of results I wrote that amp8220we might characterize this as Gratitude or Appreciation scales such as Trust Liking and Respectamp8221We have a way of disregarding previously introduced methods and even new ideas as being outdated or too difficult to consider if they go outside current models and infrastructure Yet innovation often comes in the form of successful ideas such as True Sponsorship being applied in new ways to solve new business problems Reestablishing the value of True Sponsorship through Turnstil in trial now and other methods provides a real opportunity for responsible news publishers to increase revenue at the paywall and ultimately reverse the forces challenging the sector today In my view the importance of this on a societal level cannot be overstatedPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Revenue Challenges for News Publishers and a Pure Sponsorship Solution

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