"Condé Nast is considering charging advertisers a premium for access to those subscribers, said Chris Mitchell, chief business officer for Condé Nast’s culture division, which includes the New Yorker, Wired and Vanity Fair."
This one is interesting. So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. For me one of the advantages of paying for something in the Internet is that my privacy is not violated and I will not have to see ads.
By paying the company you send them a signal that you have money available, so naturally they will try to milk you more than those who show up empty pockets
>So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway.
Allowing advertisers to target paid subscribers for some very high CPMs is not "selling their data to advertisers".
In fact, it's not much different from ads in a printed version Vanity Fair or WSJ. You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version.
Credit card companies charge you 20% but they also charge businesses another 3%. How do they get away with it when the interest rate they are borrowing at is 1/10 of that?
Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream of complains about clickbait and how advertising ruined the media. On the other no one is willing to pay for a more sustainable model.
According to their subscriber forums, their current subscription model counts as a 'paywall' as far as Conde Nast is concerned, and there are no plans to change that currently.
If they allow each person to view a few articles for free, the “paywall” is just an inconvenience: you can simply make sure you look like another person.
I think the add-on author would meet less resistance from the browser oligarchy if they described the add-on as “Read news anonymously: this add-on clears your cookies and referral info on news sites, so you can read their content without being tracked”. Same thing, but avoids DMCA word-crime.
There isn’t a big enough audience that will pay periodic subscription fees for written content unless it’s niche and/or really great.
With this move, Condé Nast is about to find out which of its properties are commodity content that usually find few takers who’d pay to go behind paywalls. It may then be forced to return to the ad supported model without a paywall unless it creates an innovative and usable solution for micropayments to allow people to pay (others have tried and some are still trying, but I haven’t seen a large enough success story).
I wonder what Apple is going to announce (rumored to be in a couple of months) on the lines of an “all you can read” magazine and related content offering based on its acquisition of Texture, and how Condé Nast’s properties will figure in this offering.
Not only a strict paywall, they're also planning significant price increases for their subscriptions.
I'm curious how this will work out in let's say two years and how this will reduce the current annual loss of 120 million. Desperate times, desperate measures.
[+] [-] piokoch|7 years ago|reply
This one is interesting. So they will charge fees from subscribers and they will sell their data to advertisers anyway. For me one of the advantages of paying for something in the Internet is that my privacy is not violated and I will not have to see ads.
[+] [-] NullPrefix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nopriorarrests|7 years ago|reply
Allowing advertisers to target paid subscribers for some very high CPMs is not "selling their data to advertisers".
In fact, it's not much different from ads in a printed version Vanity Fair or WSJ. You are being charged for a printed version of magazine and advertiser pays for having an ad in a said version.
[+] [-] devoply|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulfw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klingebeil|7 years ago|reply
Not something you wrote, but HNs relationship to journalism is weird. On the one hand there‘s an infinite stream of complains about clickbait and how advertising ruined the media. On the other no one is willing to pay for a more sustainable model.
[+] [-] konschubert|7 years ago|reply
I just hope they price their subscription reasonably.
[+] [-] _the_inflator|7 years ago|reply
And if we get better content instead of marketed content which is simply ads surrounded by cheap content, I think this is a cool move.
[+] [-] wincy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xythum|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobAley|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArrayList|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grey_earthling|7 years ago|reply
Mozilla and Google have decided that clearing cookies and faking a referrer is illegal. Microsoft hasn't yet: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
I think the add-on author would meet less resistance from the browser oligarchy if they described the add-on as “Read news anonymously: this add-on clears your cookies and referral info on news sites, so you can read their content without being tracked”. Same thing, but avoids DMCA word-crime.
[+] [-] newscracker|7 years ago|reply
With this move, Condé Nast is about to find out which of its properties are commodity content that usually find few takers who’d pay to go behind paywalls. It may then be forced to return to the ad supported model without a paywall unless it creates an innovative and usable solution for micropayments to allow people to pay (others have tried and some are still trying, but I haven’t seen a large enough success story).
I wonder what Apple is going to announce (rumored to be in a couple of months) on the lines of an “all you can read” magazine and related content offering based on its acquisition of Texture, and how Condé Nast’s properties will figure in this offering.
[+] [-] yabatopia|7 years ago|reply
I'm curious how this will work out in let's say two years and how this will reduce the current annual loss of 120 million. Desperate times, desperate measures.
[+] [-] DannyB2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rzzzwilson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joegahona|7 years ago|reply