Looking beyond…

It has been an interesting week.

As advertising revenue has suddenly plummeted, the Axate team has been hard at work introducing our new “Pay If You Can” product specifically to help local newspapers weather the storm. We have also been working with subscription publishers to open up their sites to casual paying users without the need for subscription.

On top of that we have been doing other launches, as we always have. Our first couple of weeks working from home have been intense.

I wrote before about how strange it was that the value of news has shot up so much at the same time as the revenue has collapsed for so many publishers.

Since then I have been thinking about how things might look in the future. The virus crisis feels indefinite, so the changes which happen now may well become the new normal.

If, for news media, the enforced move away from advertising revenue leads to an increased focus on reader payments, it might be a good thing. That shift has started already - which is why we’re so busy. What does this imply beyond this initial moment of shocked and sudden change?

For one thing, it will mean that editors think, more than ever, about their readers. If someone is going to pay any amount, however small, for access to a website, then the website has to live up to expectations. It has to be worth it.

When publishers have centred their businesses around advertising, the resulting experience was frequently not all worth it - witness clickbait, autoplaying videos, ads and trackers on websites.

Now, payment by users on the Axate model is the only game in town. But to persuade people to choose to pay you need more than just a price sticker.

The products themselves will have to change. Get better. Be more enjoyable. Be, in fact, more like the sites you access if you pay a subscription. Those sites are optimised to delight their audiences, not sell their clicks to advertisers.

I’m not going to gaze into my crystal ball too much to guess what form these evolved products might take.

What I will predict, though, is that with the incentives changed and new opportunity created, evolution will be swift.

If every user can spend their money via a common digital wallet with any publisher, things get a lot simpler. They will consume more, and spend more, if publishers get better at producing and marketing products people love. A simple concept - an open, competitive market.

So… imagine this.

Driven by our need for news and the failure of the advertising market, we start to make small, uncommitted payments for media which we like, need, enjoy and value.

Paying becomes commonplace and spontaneous.

Publishers secure a meaningful revenue stream, which replaces and exceeds the advertising revenue they have lost, by focussing relentlessly on their users.

And then, at some point, the crisis ends. Advertising spend returns. What will publishers do?

Here’s a prediction: the advertising revenue will by then be the icing on a rather large cake that publishers have baked for themselves.

We’ll be customers, and we’ll fall in love with products which please us. Sometimes we’ll click on ads which we find interesting.

That will be the new normal.