The latest News Corporation experiment of broadening its news paywall to TheTimes.co.uk went live last week. Many in our industry are wondering, can the mass news brands replicate the micropayment success of specialist business publishers like FT.com and WSJ.com or the many of the mobile news applications already charging subscribers for content.
Hitwise has some interesting upstream and downstream statistics on competitor news websites analysing the impact of this paywall on Times readers. So far the impact has not been as catastrophic as some media analysts have predicted – see chart below of traffic to competitor sites from the MyTimes+ paywall splash. However the full impact after the inital 30 day special offer finishes will be more illuminating.
The full blog post from Experian Hitwise can be read here.
