Newspapers rethink paywalls as digital efforts sputter
Found on Yahoo News on Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Paywalls "generate only a small fraction of industry revenue," with estimates ranging from one percent in the United States to 10 percent internationally, the study in July's International Journal of Communication said.
USC's Ananny said news organizations need to find creative ways to develop pay models that don't put readers off. He also expressed concern that expanding paywalls may lead to a new "digital divide" where information is available only to those who can afford to pay.
First readers are flooded with useless and intrusive ads, which they block. Then the publishers realize that this was a mistake and switch to paywalls, since users refuse to turn of adblockers. Now they realize that this does not work either, because there's always someone who publishes the news for free. If you want to profit from advertising, keep it unintrusive, without active content and tracking, and host it yourself. Users have learned that the current advertising networks are no guarantee for safety and can be an exploit path for malware.