Paywall and Paid Content
This innovation points to the media market’s shift towards models sustained by user revenues, whether through metered paywalls, freemium, algorithmic, or other content sales systems. A broad spectrum of perspectives on subscriptions is covered. An important factor underlying this is that the adoption of these models has also led to an adaptation of the organisation to prioritise quality of content over quantity
Kleine Zeitung is a local legacy media newspaper, distributed mainly in Styria and Carinthia. It is part of the Styria Media Group, Austria’s second largest publishing group. It owns another national daily newspaper (Die Presse), local weeklies, magazines, a radio station, book publisher and several online platforms e.g. the strong exchange and sale platform willhaben.at. Kleine Zeitung was the first in the Austrian market to introduce a self-developed paywall for journalistic content. Starting in 2016, paid content was then introduced in 4 stages. They use a freemium model: some content is free, some is charged for
Austria | Legacy media
Bild-Zeitung is a tabloid newspaper on the German media market that is as influential as it is controversial. It is part of Axel Springer Verlag SE. In 2013, Bild-Zeitung switched to a so-called freemium model. From then on, users had to pay for some articles published online, for example exclusive reports, while others continued to be available free of charge. This additional revenue model was intended to compensate for the losses the industry was making due to lower advertising revenues
Germany | Legacy media
El Mundo is a legacy media Madrid-based daily newspaper. El Mundo was the first major national media to launch the subscription model in 2019 after its failure at the turn of the century. Moreover, it did so after several months of “preparation” in which they harvested audience registration data
Spain | Legacy media
One of the first national paywalls installed around eight years ago as a technical solution. Today, legacy media house Tamedia understands its paywall has become more than a pay barrier: it’s also a tool for targeting and funding future’s journalism. That’s why the paywall team accompanies potential customers during the first few weeks and offers them a customer journey management
Switzerland | Legacy media
The Financial Times is characterized by having introduced the paywall already 20 years ago. A business model that, with the transition from paper to digital, has not changed, but that has shown to be highly effective when it comes to the generation of new subscriptions. The FT’s goal is to focus on the readers and their needs and taylor the offered subscriptions to their news consumption. The website is accessible three times a week to everyone in addition to all other social media channels that are always accessible
United Kingdom | Legacy media