Why Newspaper Paywalls Are Still a Bad Idea

Media industry research shows that more and more newspapers are implementing paywalls, possibly inspired by the launch of a "metered" wall at the earlier this year. Frederic Filloux argues in a blog post at The Monday Note that the metered approach can have benefits for papers that implement it, by boosting revenue and appealing to advertisers. But those positives can be more than outweighed by the negatives of a paywall, particularly for smaller newspapers—the main one being that a wall creates an opportunity for free competitors, of which there are a growing number.

In his post, Filloux makes the case that a well-constructed metered wall such as the one the launched in March—which was based in part on the experiences at the similar metered approach launched in 2007—can produce revenue from a paper's most devoted readers, and can do so without having much of an impact on advertising revenue.Even though page views inevitably decline with the launch of a wall, Filloux says most news sites don't sell all their advertising inventory anyway, and subscription revenue makes up for the loss of those eyeballs.