Nielsen estimates 362,000 Britons behind the Times paywall
Nielsen‘s latest wire post unveils the numbers and demographics of people accessing the Times paywall for the first time: “The parameters of our analysis indicate that the current (Q3) UK Times online audience is around 58% the size of the Q2 audience before the paywall. However, the entire registered paywall group are of particular value”…
Three months since The Times and Sunday Times websites introduced charges for viewing content, Nielsen has analysed how many people in the UK are accessing content behind this paywall and how this audience compares to the general Times online audience. In this article, all references to “The Times” include both The Times and Sunday Times.
Paywalls are increasingly being given serious consideration by publishers as they look to increase revenues from their digital content and provide a more ‘valuable’ audience to advertisers. News Corp’s tabloid offerings – The Sun and the News of the World – and the Mirror are other UK national non-specialist papers in the process of following The Times in charging for online content.
The analysis involved looking at the different URLs or subdomains within The Times‘ website, visited by UK individuals from home or work computers. Therefore, our figures do not include visitors from outside the UK, visitors from mobile phones or UK people only visiting the site from internet cafés, airports or educational establishments.
UK visitors were divided into two groups: (1) anyone visiting the site and (2) visitors accessing content behind the paywall. The latter includes people who paid online, those who get free online access as part of their print subscription and those who had a free trial.
The paywall went live on July 2nd. Across July, August and September (Q3), a monthly average of 1.78 million UK Individuals (group 1) visited the site from home and work locations. This compares to a monthly average of 3.10 million Uniques during the previous quarter without the paywall.
It was reported last year that the Times would rather have fewer, but paying, visitors and that people who visit via search engines offer little value to potential Times advertisers as they’re fleeting visitors.
So, after three months we’ve seen that the average number of monthly UK Uniques going behind the paywall (group 2) during Q3 was 362,000 or 20% of the site’s total UK visitors.
E.g. during Q3, The Times averaged 1.78 million UK visitors each month
So, how do these 362,000 paywall UK visitors a month potentially compare in ‘value’ to the 3.10 million ‘total’ UK visitors they averaged in the quarter before the paywall?
First off, those behind the paywall, who actually paid online, provide an extra revenue stream in their own right. Furthermore, all registered paying customers, whether they subscribed offline or online, provide a richer sales proposition, which should command a higher premium because of the detailed personal opt-in data they provide to the publisher. Signing up to the Times paywall online, for example, involves nine required fields of personal data.
Secondly, as they have registered and paid, subscribers can offer a more committed and engaged audience. In Q3, Times paywall visitors averaged 42% more pages per person a month (17) than the average Q2 visitor (12).
Thirdly, in terms of the difference in value around “who” the audience is, the composition of the Times Q3 paywall audience was compared to their Q2 general audience by income, gender, age and geodemographics. Geodemographics are defined by “A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods” – a segmentation by lifestyle, demographics and postcode commonly known as ACORN.
Household income and ACORN classification point towards the paywall audience being more affluent. Although the audience share across income groups is similar, there is a noticeable difference when it comes to the lower income households and households earning between £50K and £80K annually.
£50K-£80K households make up a larger part of the paywall group at the expense of those earning less than £20K, accounting for 29% of the paywall group compared to 25% of the Q2 total audience. In contrast, households earning less than £20K account for 14% of the paywall group compared to 19% of the Q2 total audience.
E.g. during Q2, households with an annual income less than £20K accounted for 19% of all Times UK visitors, compared to 14% of the Times UK paywall audience across Q3. (Among households with known income)
This is a similar pattern across the geodemographic ACORN characteristics. The five ACORN categories, in descending order of social affluence, are “Wealthy Achievers”, “Urban Prosperity”, “Comfortably Off”, “Moderate Means” and “Hard-Pressed”.
Although the Q2 total and Q3 paywall audiences across three of the five ACORN groups are similar, “Urban Prosperity” households make up a bigger part of the paywall group at the expense of the “Hard Pressed”. “Urban Prosperity” households account for 22% of the paywall group compared to 15% of the total audience; “Hard Pressed” households account for 5% of the paywall group compared to 11% of the total Q2 audience.
E.g. during Q2, “hard-pressed” households accounted for 11% of all Times UK visitors, compared to 5% of the Times UK paywall audience across Q3. (Among households with known ACORN classification)
In terms of gender, the audiences are fairly similar although females have a larger footprint among the paywall audience (48%) than the general Q2 audience (45%). The paywall audience also tends to be older – people over 50 account for 52% of the paywall group compared to 38% of the general audience. Their footprint has increased mainly at the expense of the 25-34 year old age group, who account for just 13% of the paywall group compared to 22% of the general audience.
E.g. during Q2, people over 65 accounted for 9% of all Times UK visitors, compared to 16% of the Times UK paywall audience across Q3
In summary, the parameters of our analysis indicate that the current (Q3) UK Times online audience is around 58% the size of the Q2 audience before the paywall, and that paywall visitors account for one in five current Times visitors. However, not only do those who sign up online generate extra subscription revenue, the entire registered paywall group are of particular value, as they offer a richer sales proposition through a combination of providing more details about themselves, being more engaged with the site and being more socially affluent than the previous audience.