Advertising has for long been the revenue stream upon which digital publishers have survived, with banner ads still the most common form of advertising today – but things are changing and fast.
Publishers need a reliable income stream and the arms race between advertising networks and ad-blockers means that display advertising can no longer be that source alone.
Subscriptions are the most stable of revenue sources, but to build subscribers is difficult if you do not already have an established brand like the NY Times or the Economist. Convincing people that your content is unique and worth paying a little bit of money for every month is a tough prospect when there is already a wealth of content to read/hear/watch online for free – but content is not the only value publishers can offer to subscribers as incentives to sign up.
These incentives could be as simple as being able to read the content without any display ads slowing down the user experience. It is possible to turn the negatives surrounding display advertising into a positive by offering people a cost-effective way to avoid the distractions and support the publisher. A subscription of just one or two dollars per month would offset the lost revenue from display ads shown to even the most regular reader – so everything over that is profit that is otherwise left on the table or gobbled up by some of the blackmail-like antics of some ad blocking tools.
Display ads can then be doubly useful if used to offset the costs of showing content to free users and as a push toward subscriptions. And native advertising, if done well, can actually add value to the content offerings – so keeping it for users in-front and behind paywalls is no problem.
Beyond basic subscriptions, there are service like Blendl that let people pick and choose (and pay) for specific articles from a wide variety of publishers. This ads an extra layer of revenue from people that might not want to read many of your articles, but are happy to part with a dollar or so for each piece they do read.
Flattr then lets people tip creators for their work, so people can show appreciation for the content they do like by rewarding publishers or even authors directly for their work.
Publishers need to integrate all of these revenue streams to make sure their content is in front of the most people and they are generating the greatest profits – it is no longer good enough to just generate revenues from ads, but at the same time The Times recently opening up their paywall a little shows that just paid subscriptions does not work either. Now is the time to integrate all the options available and make them work together.
Image by The Sociable