Fairfax – we’ve talked about ad-free, subs-based SMH and Age sites
Fairfax has discussed launching ad-free online versions of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, a senior member of staff revealed today.
At the AIMIA future of digital advertising summit in Sydney, Fairfax Digital’s commercial boss Pippa Leary was asked about consumer resistance to intrusive advertising.
She said: “Could we create an ad-free SMH or Age site? It’s an interesting question that we tend to think about a lot.
“But I think that taking the advertising off and asking people to pay for it would probably appeal to only a small niche of people.”
She added that consumer resistance to ads tended to be when they were badly targeted or cluttered, rather than all advertising.
Fairfax has discussed launching ad-free online versions of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, a senior member of staff revealed this morning.
Speaking at the AIMIA future of digital advertising summit in Sydney, Fairfax Digital’s commercial boss Pippa Leary said: “Could we create an ad-free SMH or Age site? It’s an interesting question that we tend to think about a lot.
“But I think that taking the advertising off and asking people to pay for it would probably appeal to only a small niche of people.”
She added that consumer resistance to ads tended to be when they were badly targeted or cluttered, rather than all advertising.
Or you could just use ad blocker on firefox.
Agree that well targetted ads arent too annoying, smh though is full of ads that pop up over the article text to take over most of the screen. No matter how well these ads might be targeted (they’re not) this is always going to be annoying, because my primary reason for being on an article page is reading the article.
If there’s a good ad on the side I may click it after, but will go out of my way not to click it if it’s hindering my experience.
Instead of talking about it, why don’t they implement it, or at least run a beta program. It’s not that hard!
The Guardian’s website in the UK offers ad free subscriptions to their website.
I agree with Dave about the pop up’s – there is nothing worse and it annoys the living daylights out of me!
As for every ad having to be targeted I disagree. Some products need to be sold to a very wide range of users and often a decent campaign online and off line can sell a product to somebody who was not looking for it and didn’t need it.
A note to all publishers: Let me read the content on your site and feel free to serve up some ad’s around it – please do not make ad’s pop up, or over the content or videos begin without me activating them. You did not do it in your newspapers or magazines, why do it online…?
Thank you
@Craig
I tend to agree they should experiment with this, but the problem will be how much it will cannibalise print subs???
for it to be a decent proposition it will need to be (much) cheaper than a print sub, so what will the effect of that be?
jonathon
if FD could replicate the experience on the print mastheads i reckon I’d subscribe. I still like reading SMH and The Age and think they’re well put together, readable papers with quality journalists and the user at the forefront.
I get online and there’s loads of ads, heaps of tabloid shit and finding what I want is hard.
It’s like they are two totally different products.
Imight – actually they do interrupt the printed product. Ever seen a full page press ad or an insert? Yes, it’s the same thing. Now if smh had good ads I don’t think people would mind so much…
It would be easy to implement, but wouldn’t necessarily raise much revenue. The cost of subscribing may not be that much different to the ad revenue from regular readers of the website.