Paid Online News Venture Fails To Get Subscribers

Ian Lamont writes "The idea of migrating people from free online news content to paid subscriptions has been dealt a blow. A venture meant to fill the void left by the print Rocky Mountain Times has attracted 3,000 subscribers — just 6% of its original goal of reaching 50,000 paid subscribers by Thursday. InDenverTimes.com is currently free, but the plan was to have gated premium content starting next month for a $5/month subscription. The project has entrepreneurial backing and articles from journalists who used to work for the print-focused Rocky Mountain News, which closed last month. However, a lack of paying subscribers and low online ad rates means that the venture might have to scale back its ambitions."

Re:oblig.

[David Gerard]

That's fantastic! And not hideously technically inaccurate, which amazed me.

Re:It's always the same story

[David Gerard]

60% of consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed. "This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers," said Tudor Aw at KPMG, "and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether lying to advertisers or lying to subscribers is the right revenue model."

40% of respondents said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows zipping and swooping about the screen, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to get their telly from BitTorrent and browse with Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.

People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone that could steal someone's WiFi connection.

Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! [today.com] "If you know what's good for you."

Re:oblig.

[igny]

I had the mod points, but I was unable to spend them for that post was modded to the max. So I am posting a reply to help the fellow modders who are now wondering how to spend their points. Do not worry the fellow modders, if this post gets modded to the max I will reply again.

Re:oblig.

[robot_love]

I'll believe that when I see it!