Public Media’s Corporate Support Value Proposition: No Paywall
With print newspapers continuing their steady decline, and more Americans accessing their news from digital sources, it’s not surprising that paywalls are becoming an increasingly common strategy employed by publishers to monetize their digital content.
But a recent Pew Research Study found that paywalls may not be an effective way of converting digital news consumers into subscribers. Indeed, the Pew study found that:
- Most Americans don’t pay for news: 83% of U.S. adults haven’t paid for news in the past year.
- Paywalls are common but rarely lead to payment: 74% of Americans encounter paywalls at least occasionally, but just 1% say they pay when they hit one.
- 53% look for the information elsewhere.
- 32% give up on accessing the content
- Why people don’t pay:
- 49% say there’s plenty of free news available.
- 32% aren’t interested enough.
While this data may be disappointing for digital news publishers looking to increase their bottom line, it does offer some strong selling points for public media sponsorship as we work to differentiate our value proposition in the current cluttered digital media landscape. Consider:
83% of Americans don’t pay for news, largely because free options exist.
If free news options are the preference of most Americans online, it becomes increasingly important that the free content they access is trusted and credible.
As part of our noncommercial mission, public media has long delivered high-quality journalism without a paywall that our audiences trust to be independent and free from commercial influence.
This and other infographics available for download in Greater Public’s Corporate Support Proposal Assets Library
This works for our sponsors in a couple of unique ways:
- Higher Recall: As a noncommercial news source, public media offers sponsors an uncluttered, brand-safe media environment – on digital and broadcast platforms alike – where their messages stand out.
- Enhanced Credibility: The trust our audiences have in public media translates to our sponsors, as our audiences consider businesses they hear on NPR to be more credible.
Many Americans appreciate free access to news but don’t want to pay for it.
Public media sponsors help keep our content free for everyone, and in doing so they position their brands as champions of public media and local community support. Local audiences view local sponsors as community-minded by association, and see them in a more positive light as a result. This enables our sponsors to enhance their image as socially-responsible organizations, and build a preference for their brand among a loyal base of customers pre-disposed to support their business.
74% of people hit paywalls, and most leave or look elsewhere.
While others block access, public media always has and always will welcome all. Sponsoring public media aligns our sponsors’ brands with the qualities of openness, transparency, and accessibility that our audiences value about the NPR public service mission. And the goodwill that our audiences attribute to public media carries over to our sponsors by association. Public media audiences are fiercely loyal to NPR, and prefer to do business with companies that support us.
This and other infographics available for download in Greater Public’s Corporate Support Proposal Assets Library
So the bottom line with it comes to digital news paywalls? Public media is not about the bottom line and that pays off for our sponsors.
Note: special thanks to Ted Petersen at GBH for bringing the Pew Research Study to my attention.
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