NY Times $10 million Free News Bet NOT a Sure Thing
Did the Berlin Wall just come down? NO! Blogosphere cheering is for the fall of the New York Times online pay wall. NOT all is necessarily good, though, despite blogger glee for more (unwanted by readers) advertising.
You can’t fight city hall, and the NYT can not (almost) single handedly demand that people open up their wallets to consume valuable content online. Nevertheless, all free is not necessarily a slam dunk.
First off, the NYT will lose $10 million in yearly subscription revenues. Naturally, the goal is to offset the loss with new ad dollars. IS IT DOABLE?
Given that the NYT says a principal objective of the open content move is to take advantage of search engine and link induced traffic, ad rates and volume are uncertain.
The NYT opinion columns which will now be available to all are nevertheless not expected to generate “much ad revenue.” What’s more, because search engine and link-generated traffic are generally drive by readers, off to the next off-site click before even finishing a story, flow through to other NYT high CPM content is not a given.
The NYT is not disclosing how much increased Web traffic it expects going forward, or what the projected new ad revenues will be.
Given that page view increases are targeted for the fleeting search engine and link-fueled visitors, it is unlikely the NYT will be able to profit from enhanced CPMs it derives from targeting its lknown, oyal, direct-navigation user base.
Who can argue, though, if an old gray lady finally gets Web 2.0 religion.
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