Alright, I regret the poor grammar but you get the point especially if you are in the business of providing content to your properties web portal. The content has to come from somewhere and it requires effort and labor to make it relevant content. That is why when I read MediaPost's: Behavorial Insider's article "Rephrasing The Question: How Much Is Your Free Content Worth", I thought of pay walls, subscriptions, and advertising based business models for web content and how that picture will change in the coming years.
I am a person that tries to focus on marketing to the numbers. Just as we market to the 62% who buy top of mind, I read this article and find myself focussing on the business model that over 80% of respondants say they accept...
"In a cursory way, MarketingSherpa recently conducted an online "Popular Media Study" involving 1,314 respondent that starts to get at the issue. It posed a scenario to the user in which she visits free sites, some of which track her online behaviors to push her ads in her travels elsewhere online. A friend informs her that there is a paid alternative service available that does not include any ads. How much would the user be willing to pay for such a service? The answers are fairly predictable, but impressive in their weighting and the price sensitivity they reveal.
I am fine with online ads and will not pay: 87.93%
I would pay $15 yearly fee: 10.29%
I would pay $150 yearly fee: 1.42%
I would pay $1500 yearly fee: 0.35%It's striking that so many consumers showed such a high sensitivity to price. Most individual sites that are looking to the paid models are hoping for $5 a month fees at least, and this survey shows that only 10% of users would want to pay even $15 a year for access to a range of content without ads."
The next scenario brings into play Behavorial Targeting....
""If you were Mary, how much would you pay right now to consume your otherwise free online content without any web tracking ads? (Mary will still see ads, but they won't be as relevant because they won't be based on tracking.)"
I am fine with online ads and will not pay: 87.87%
I would pay $15 yearly fee: 10.35%
I would pay $150 yearly fee: 1.16%
I would pay $1500 yearly fee: 0.62%
Calling out behavioral targeting technologies specifically did not budge the needle of attitudes at all. Obviously, we shouldn't take this as a "yes" to behavioral targeting. These are the most rudimentary of questions that can't get at the details of how consumers are perceiving online advertising. They may assume that all online advertising has some user tracking involved and so they don't' distinguish between online ads generally and behaviorally targeted ads. Or, when faced with the prospect of paying for content to avoid user tracking, the issue becomes less pressing. We don't really know, and these responses beg for deeper questions rather than hasty and self-serving conclusions."
And the final piece of the survey hits on targeting....
""Jack discovers another new tool that would give him complete transparency into what is being tracked about him for web advertising and tells Mary about it. (Mary would have access to a tool which shows her exactly what data is used to influence the ads that she sees (for example, she would see "sports" as one of her interests and can edit it if she wants). With this new tool, if you were Mary, will you change your mind on how much you would pay right now to consume your online content without any web tracking ads?"
I am fine with online ads and will not pay: 84.72%
I would pay $15 yearly fee: 12.26%
I would pay $150 yearly fee: 2.40%
I would pay $1500 yearly fee: 0.62%.
"The response here is very odd," Tawakol admits. "There is not a lot of shift. We would expect them to say that if they had this level of control they would be even more OK with the trade-off of dollars for targeting."
There you have it, just one survey but we have seen in several pieces that consumers will be very picky if they have to pay at all and this survey gives us some concrete numbers on the business models. My advice, develop your advertising based sales model and go out and sell it.