The Australian says it has 30,000 paying digital subscribers
News Limited says it has beaten its initial internal targets for digital subscriptions to The Australian, with 30,000 paying subscribers.
However, the company has not broken down how many of those have bought a digital pass, a digital and print package, or made an individual purchase through its tablet apps.
A further 10,000 print subscribers have accepted a free 12 month digital subscription.
The numbers are the first News Limited has released since its paywall started charging at the end of January.
The chief operating officer of The Australian John Allan said: “Clearly we are still in very early days, and we are learning every day, but thisis an extremely encouraging start. The number of consumers who have trialled our product, and subsequently taken up the subscription offer, has comfortably exceeded both our internal sweepstakes and our budgets.
“This isn’t just about the headline number though – all our metrics are heading in the right direction. Critically, with print circulation remaining steady, we are growing overall paid sales of The Australian and we are earning more digital revenue under the new subscription model than we were under the advertising-only model.”
The release of data from News Limited follows a similar move by Fairfax Media which offered some information about is digital audiences for the SMh and The Age last month.
Allan added: “Additionally, the launch has boosted print subscriptions – many people have chosen to take up the print and digital bundles – and we are gathering extremely valuable customer data.”
The announcement said: ” The Australian is not detailing breakdown between these channels at this stage, but will do so when expected changes to the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s reporting comes into effect in the coming months.”
Why do The Australian and Herald Sun home pages auto-refresh?
User ID not verified.
Devil’s Advocate – News stories break every minute on some days. Sports scores can change by the second. Consumers demand instant and updated information.
It would make sense to continually refresh and update to show new content on the page dont you think?
User ID not verified.
Can’t wait to see Herald Sun implement this and watch the traffic to their site drop. Pay wall. What a ridiculous idea.
User ID not verified.
“Why do The Australian and Herald Sun home pages auto-refresh?”
Fairfax do it too. It’s to generate false page-views and muddy the stats. Auto-start videos are another offender.
It’s a foul thing to do to your readers, especially those on mobile devices with expensive data-plans. You can tune most browsers to stop it.
Old school media really don’t understand the web and have come to the party very late, after a decade or more of viewing it as “the enemy.”
User ID not verified.
You have to give it to NEWS, leading the way here. Jack Matthews is spending millions on Mconsultants to get an answer
User ID not verified.
@Me nice conspiracy theory but note that article pages do not carry auto-refresh – it’s simply about presenting the freshest home page… Also “Old school media” are not “late to the party” – Australian newspaper publishers have been online longer than Google.
User ID not verified.
30,000 subscribers.
Back in the day when you were being flogged some space in The Australian: How many people did the News Ltd reps say bought the paper?
What about pass on readership value etc
The great thing with digital (unless of course the old school can inflate things, like with auto refresh) is that we get a more realistic idea of subscribers / buyers etc
Is 30k good?
User ID not verified.
NB 30,000 is un-verified by audit.
@zaf – I just assume Herald Sun were not charging for their banners and skin that day on a CPM basis?
User ID not verified.