

NYTimes.com daily uniques down ~40% since paywall implementation - yakto
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=nytimes.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

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mrkurt
Keep in mind that most ad funded sites on the internet have excess
unique/impression inventory, even 40% excess at times. So there are three
numbers to consider here:

1) Increased subscription revenue

2) _Sold_ inventory they've lost

3) Effect on pricing of remaining inventory

Oddly enough, a site like the NYT might be able to make more money off ads
with less impressions (#3 up there). There are two reasons for this, the first
is their brand value. People want their ads on NYT, scarcer supply means
they'll have to pay more to do that, and some of them will.

The second is a change in demographics. I would guess that the lost traffic is
disproportionately less valuable demographics. I, for instance, am not a great
demographic for advertisers. My dad is, though, and NYT is still getting his
impressions.

As an example of what this might mean, imagine that anyone who made less than,
say, $150k/year stopped visiting Reddit. They'd lose a huge amount of traffic,
but the value of the remaining traffic would make their sellable demographics
outstanding.

~~~
dlss
I did _not_ know about the excess inventory. Do you mind posting a source?

It just seems like someone would be willing to pay $0.001 CPM at least for
those impressions...

(edit: this HN post, interestingly enough, seems to be the top of my google
searches for this :p)

~~~
mrkurt
I'm the source! Although you can identify excess inventory on sites if you
know what to look for and pay enough attention. Browse around the NYT site and
you'll see ads for the NYT, Google Adwords, and probably Google display stuff.
This is excess inventory, usually. Ads for your own company are called "house
ads", the others are generally referred to as remnant inventory.

Now, someone will almost always pay $.001/CPM to serve ads, but it's usually
not a great deal for a publisher. Ad serving costs are higher than you'd
expect, a pageview might end up requiring calls to 10 paid ad tech services
for instance (demographics, audience categorization, etc). The NYT is likely
losing money when you see remnant advertising, they'd be better off not
serving that impression at all.

There are also a number of companies that just won't run remnant stuff, or
won't run ads for reasonable sounding CPMs. Conde Nast, for instance, has
fixed CPMs that their sales people can't bend from much. They feel that
selling for cheaper would dilute their value. Some of the properties even feel
like cheap looking remnant ads make the site seem less "premium".

The last sentence here is pretty telling: "since the site had excess ad
inventory pre-paywall, the decline won’t affect the ability to satisfy demand
for premium units".

[http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2011/04/21/ny-times-
sa...](http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2011/04/21/ny-times-says-
paywalls-working-100k-subscribers-and-counting/)

------
ghshephard
Has the NYTimes.com paywall really influenced someone who read the website
previously? When I'm browsing from chrome, I justly click Cmd+Shift+N prior to
going there (launches incognito mode in chrome with a fresh set of cookies.)

When I'm browsing from my iPhone, I just click the little "x" at the top of
the screen to stop the javascript from loading after the content has been
downloaded - basically stops my iPhone from loading the paywall code, but
loads all the content.

I always thought the paywall was really just to prevent the print subscribers
from canceling their print subscription and switching over to web only - it
convinces them they are getting value with their subscription. The Paywall
itself was left deliberately leaky for people who only connected to it via the
web.

But, based on the stats, it looks like there may be a large audience of casual
subscribes that have been deterred from visiting the website - I'm sure that
must be troubling for the NYT.

~~~
minimax
At $3.75/week it was less hassle for me just to pay up. Strangely I also
noticed that I actually read a few more articles per week now that I'm paying
for it. It's a great paper. I don't understand the aversion to spending a
little bit of money to get a bunch of good content.

On a side note, the Android app used to be horribly buggy but a recent update
seems to have fixed the issues. Anyone who was turned off before may want to
give it another shot.

~~~
thematt
I think the aversion is that with the growth of the internet, news is becoming
(or already has) commoditized. People look at the articles in the NYT and they
don't see original journalistic content, they see something they can get from
50 other sites thru Google News. If the NYT wants to survive, they need to get
back to their journalistic roots and increase the value proposition to
potential customers...it has to be more than just "it's less of an
inconvenience to just pay us."

~~~
minimax
The commenter I was originally responding to said that he switched to
incognito mode or halted the page load to break through the paywall. If the NY
Times had the same value as any other non-paywall site, why would he go to the
trouble?

The NY Times is a good paper. The writing is good and I think the breadth of
coverage is good too. They have started adding videos. Their interactive
infographics are probably the best on the Internet. NYT stories frequently hit
the frontpage of HN, probably more than any other U.S. newspaper website. What
do you think they should do to increase the value of their content?

~~~
Dylan16807
I can easily see myself bothering with a few seconds of technical effort to
get to a sub-par page. That page has the specific thing I happen to want to
look at, but that itself doesn't mean it's very good. If quality was all that
mattered people would only visit one site, the best one.

------
donohoe
As a former NYT developer (I left a month ago) but still in touch with my
colleagues I can say there is a drop in Uniques and Page Views.

However, nothing like 40% and also within the internal predictions as far as I
can tell.

I don't know that the Subscription policy is a run-away success for the NYT
but it's certainly doing well.

I say this as a person who originally thought it was a bad idea.

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yakto
Interestingly, Google should still be counting those who click through to a
NYTimes article, hit the paywall, and bounce. So the 40% drop is the result of
1) users not clicking NYTimes links anymore, or 2) fewer NYTimes links being
presented to users, perhaps due to a drop in SERPs.

I'm a datapoint of only one, but #1 above certainly applies in my case. I find
myself much less likely to click through, especially on my mobile device,
because I'm annoyed when I find myself above the monthly free limit. After
hitting the limit a couple of months, I just stop clicking thru in the first
place.

~~~
rhizome
That has always been the biggest question for me: how many don't? There are
bounces from content, and there are bounces from commercial barriers:
paywalls, subscription modals, "give us your email please" modals (really,
blocking modals of all kinds), "install our android app (or continue to
site)"...I doubt any site is passing out their failure rates for these
business decisions.

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aw3c2
Since when is Google Trends reliable enough to make valid assumptions about
the visitor statistics of a website?

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AlexBlom
Uniques are down, but I'm wondering how much subscriptions have gone up (if at
all)?

I'm also wondering how many of those 'dropped' uniques are scrapers, quick
bounces, etc?

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alexinoz
Something I find interesting to ponder is the value of brands in journalism.
The NYT has a great brand and I'm sure most people would associate it with
quality journalism.

Whatever the outcome for this paper (paid subscriptions and higher cpms or the
opposite), I'm more interested in all the other mastheads out there with less
brand equity.

As a guess I think most people will be more comfortable handing over their
hard earned to WSJ or NYT than they will to their local rag.

So paywalls IMHO spell doom for all the other papers who don't have the same
brand equity / reputation.

Would you pay $3.95 for your local paper before handing it to NYT or WSJ?

My 2c :)

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athst
I'd highly recommending the documentary "Page One" that just came out, which
is about the NYT. It really makes you appreciate the work they do.

I know we laugh at their attempts to make money online, but that fact is that
it would be a huge loss if they weren't able to continue to do their work.

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xbryanx
I am guessing that they knew their traffic would decrease. What we probably
won't know for a while is whether the decreased ad revenue, as a result of
fewer impressions, is greater than the increased subscription revenue.
Assuming subscriptions have increased.

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protomyth
Are they making more or less money?

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/264920-the-new-york-times-
ce...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/264920-the-new-york-times-ceo-
discusses-q1-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript)

~~~
yakto
Q1 2011 revenues were down 4%, but since the paywall didn't launch until mid-
March, we'll have to wait until the next quarterly to learn the full early
results of the change.

------
fleitz
Yes, but how much is their profit down?

