News of the World paywall to be launched in October

News International will place the News of the World website behind a paywall by October, with The Sun site soon to follow.

An introductory rate is expected  to be charged for the first month. This would then follow with a daily, weekly or monthly subscription to the site.

The News of the World website, which will be completely overhauled, will provide exclusive video content to subscribers, as will a new app.

WCRS, News of the World‘s lead creative agency, along with Glue Isobar, are understood to be working on promotional campaigns to support the new site.

VCCP Search is also understood to be working on a search strategy to drive subscriptions, since News International has withdrawn from conventional news search.

According to ComScore, News of the World received 1.1 million unique visitors in July, viewing 14 million pages for an average of 8.1 minutes a visit.

By comparison, leading online newspaper Mail Online claimed 8.9 million unique visitors, with an average visit of 25 minutes in July.

MediaCom managing partner Stefan Bardega said the paywall model for News of the World could be attractive to advertisers: “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.”