Times’ Website Visits Fall By Two-Thirds
Yes, RoadMAP knows that you need to register to view pieces from the Financial Times’ website, but it’s free and, in this case, highly appropriate. As one of the few journalism sites which has successfully employed a paywall, the FT has a very interesting report on the impact of a new paywall on the viewership of the Times of London’s website.
Times’ Website Visits Fall By Two-Thirds
Visits to The Times’ website have dropped by two-thirds in the weeks since News International,
the media group controlled by Rupert Murdoch, began to implement its paywall strategy, according to new data.
However, the decline has been gentler than the 90 per cent fall in traffic some researchers expected.
Mr Murdoch’s experiment in charging for online content is being watched by newspaper proprietors across the world, many of whom are considering similar measures amid lower circulation and declining print advertising revenues.
According to figures collated by Experian Hitwise, which monitors internet traffic, the
most significant fall in visits was in the weeks just before the paywall went up, when visitors
were asked to register before viewing Times articles. Traffic fell 58 per cent in the five
weeks between May 22 and June 26, with The Times’ share of UK news and media web traffic falling from 4.37 per cent to 1.83 per cent.
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