News International Continues Paid Content Transition
News International is to continue its subscription strategy by placing News of the World online content behind a paywall by October. The Sun will follow, while The Times and The Sunday Times have already introduced this model.
An introductory fee is planned for the first month of subscription, which will be promoted to the public through a strong marketing campaign designed by their lead creative agency WCRS and Glue Isobar. They will also be concentrating on a new search strategy to boost subscriptions.
The transition by News of the World to a subscription-only model will focus on exclusive video content broadcast via a revamped website and application. Their paid content move is said to be appealing to advertisers.
Stefan Bardega, MediaCom Managing Partner, commented, "One of the challenges around web and mobile for advertisers is that you can't track between the two, unless users are registered across both... What News of the World could offer is true cross-platform targeting, and that's very interesting."