For years people have been getting things for free, if you exclude the price for connection. Songs, movies, articles, tip, tricks, recipes…virtually everything has been free if you have an internet connection. I have been listening to free music and watching free movies for as long as anyone else, most of it poor quality and some attached to viruses. So why would I advocate a paywall for a newspaper?

It’s quite simple really. A paywall helps advertisers target consumers.

‘The Daily Rag’ claims to have 100,000 people reading its online version. It knows this because the stats for the website show 100,000 unique visitors. The stats also show 30,000 of these people use a UAE IP address and a further 30,000 from the UK. It isn’t able to tell much more than that. It can estimate its readership is of a certain age but has no proof beyond surveys it conducts itself. It knows if a user has come via a search engine or has chosen to directly type the web address. It knows a few things but not a lot.

‘The Daily Hack’ sits behind a paywall. It knows exactly who is impressed enough to visit its online version as the visitor has paid. The visitor has probably also registered with an email address and paid with a credit card, The Hack has this information as well. This outlet knows it has 100,000 readers because its website stats tell it so. The difference to this and The Daily Rag is that this outlet knows 30,000 of these people are active readers. It also knows where these active readers like to browse within the site. Sure, so does the first outlet. But with The Daily Hack the users have chosen to pay for the privilege. There is no search engine randomness involved. It can see if John Smith likes the sports page. The Rag has no idea what John Smith likes or even which of its 100,000 is John Smith.

If I were an advertiser I would be much more inclined to place my advert on the exact page that John Smith likes to read as he is just the person I am targeting. Why has Facebook succeeded to the level it has? Why has Google Ads taken the company to regime toppling levels? Because both sites allow targeted advertising. Facebook asks users the age, sex, location and much more before an ad is placed, and Google only charges a company if their ad is clicked on (both were also very clever to let the user do the work).

The paywall. It’s the future.

Edit: This is a post from a friend of mine on the same subject. Seems it has people talking!