Lisa MacLeod, head of digital at Times Media, spoke to media update’s Adam Wakefield about the decision to implement a paywall.

Prior to the paywall’s launch, Times Media laid the groundwork with a tongue-in-cheek campaign based on comments made by a certain reality star-turned-president.

While the campaign was lively, according to MacLeod, the decision to introduce the paywall was deeply considered, given the challenges that exist within the current media landscape.

Premium content is the unique selling point

“It’s a crowded market in media in South Africa. We are all under pressure from Facebook and Google, which are taking the lion’s share of digital spend. CPMs (Cost per thousand impressions) are being driven lower and the advertising community have embraced the low-as-possible programmatic buy,” MacLeod explains.

“Fake news is everywhere and trusted sources of news are in short supply. That leaves us all in a precarious position: on one hand, you have declining print ads and circulation and on the other hand, declining digital ad revenues, and huge, growing audiences, but no circulation or subscription revenue.”

Not every news platform has a unique selling point (USP) strong enough for a paywall to be implemented, but, according to MacLeod, BusinessLIVE is one platform that has that strong USP.

“At TMG, we have many different titles and websites, most of which won’t work as paywall sites. BusinessLIVE, however, was specifically created to have a premium, pay-walled element to it,” she says.

“We did this by consolidating our strongest business titles, with the highest LSM audiences, into one business supersite, adding in a number of powerful international partners.”

They then used a freemium model to paywall only certain content, while leaving the majority of the sites free-to-air to draw in the widest audience possible.

Times Media believes there is “something for everybody” on BusinessLIVE, at different levels of affordability, and the paywall will help fund and sustain excellence in trusted journalism.

“We are also rebuilding all our sites, using cutting edge technology to optimise for speed and lower data wherever possible, and the business sites are fully https secure as well.”

Online has changed SA media

Newspapers have been important pillars of established media for decades. However, the emergence and solidification of online news as a separate entity from print has changed the revenue and readership landscape. It is a change that MacLeod and Times Media considered when implementing BusinessLIVE’s paid subscription service.

“Within newsrooms, it has finally dawned that we need to be faster and more proactive to keep our audiences with us on all platforms. We are most certainly well past the days of respecting only a newspaper timetable, but we still have a lot of work to do on that front,” MacLeod explains.

“It is a big change to accept that readers are no longer just print customers and that digital audiences have value and want to engage with your content and brands in the online space, and you should not be making that difficult for them.”

Paywall an important step focused on reader revenue and satisfaction

MacLeod noted the general attitude to paywalls in South Africa is one of scepticism because the prevalent belief is that content should be free. What is important to recognise is for online journalism to be sustainable, there has to be some form of charging for content and moving beyond ad revenue.

The paywall for BusinessLIVE was an important step in this direction, focusing on reader revenue and reader satisfaction.

“Display is tanking, native is costly and laborious and, while lucrative, most agencies and clients don’t actually understand how it works yet, or are not ready to experiment. Digital sales skills are in short supply, as is any real depth of vision from clients,” MacLeod says.

“As a former managing editor of both Business Day and the Financial Times, I can promise you that running a newsroom is an astonishingly expensive business. Basic economics dictate that that money has to come from somewhere in the absence of decent advertising revenue or venture capital funding.”

Premium news and premium partners

Beyond Times Media’s broad range of local journalists and thinkers, whose writing appears on BusinessLIVE, the media house has formed a partnership with the Financial Times of London and New York’s Wall Street Journal.

MacLeod describes the partnerships as being enormously important, and something newspaper brands are learning to do.

“The big internationals are looking to Africa to expand their digital footprint. They need to keep their growth curves up and to the right, and audiences in the US and Europe are plateauing, so it’s natural to look to uncharted territory for numbers, hence the arrival of Huffington Post, Business Insider etc. pushing to Africa,” MacLeod says.

“Our partnerships with the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and data providers, Morningstar, were specifically chosen because of the kind of coverage they provide and their stature and credibility with the audiences we are aiming at.”

The value of such partnerships is giving readers access to international, high-quality journalism and a worldview of events that local media lacks at times, especially BusinessLIVE’s readers, whom MacLeod describes as highly educated, well read, travelled, and expectant of excellent South African journalism.

They receive this from Times Media’s writers at Business Day, Financial Mail, Business Times and Rand Daily Mail. The partnerships with the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal offer those readers the high-quality global view they demand.

Learning about what the audience wants, from themselves

When BusinessLIVE was launched last year, and prior to the paywall being implemented, readers were encouraged to register on the site to access the then still free premium content. While not all those who registered have since jumped upon the subscription ferry, the data provided allows Times Media to understand their audience better.

A more thorough understanding of their audience assists the group in providing a better product. That, and being able to tell advertisers who exactly they are advertising too.

“We collected a huge number of registrations prior to the paywall, and, of course, the pay model has brought extra information. It is important to us because we are getting a good idea now of who our readers are, where they work, what they like, and what their propensity to pay is,” MacLeod says.

“Will we sell those databases or audience data to advertisers? Definitely not. Will we use that information to build segments and target more effectively? Absolutely. Will that be attractive to advertisers wanting to tap a high-end audience? Yes.”

Reader data must be treated with care

MacLeod says Times Media understands the value of the data accessible to them, and how destructive it could to readers and customers were it not treated with care. Pointedly, MacLeod says they are not looking for short cuts to online success.

“We are looking for long-term annuity revenue and customer satisfaction, not just a quick hit off a data sale.”

Given the scale by which Times Media have supported the rollout and implementation of BusinessLive, that the company has taken a long, patient view, is not a surprise.

For more information, visit www.businesslive.co.za.

Paying for good journalism is critical in supporting good journalism. Read more in our article, Ferial Haffajee on South African journalism and the next generation.

*Image courtesy of Times Media Group