Decoding the digital paywall journey for magazines in India
A panel of industry experts deliberated on the future of the magazine business in the era of digital disruption at the Indian Magazine Congress
The Indian Magazine Congress saw industry experts come together for a chat on the ‘Digital Paywall journey for magazines in India’.
On the panel were Srinivasan B, Ananda Vikatan, Jean-Paul Reparon, Agrimedia, Netherlands, Jan Thoresen, CEO, Labrador CMS, Norway, Anant Nath, Delhi Press, Nikhil Kanekel, HT Digital Stream, were present in the panel discussion. The session was moderated by DN Mukherjea, RPSG group.
The discussion focused on the future of the magazine business in the era of digital disruption. Mukherjea started the discussion by asking, “Do we need to dial up on reader revenues and put as much content as possible, where readers pay for it or is there still a belief that ad-supported model in India can still create some value for the brands”?
In this era of extreme digital practices, it has become difficult for magazines to get the revenue they need for their survival.
“If the content is worth paying for, it has to be behind the paywall. We use it to attract audiences. We have to cultivate the user and when we see the user is spending time, and then we provide paid content in front of the paywall. I believe there has to be a mix between paywall and no paywall,” Srinivasan shared his experiences.
Anant said, “When nothing worked for us, in 2018, we started putting our content behind the paywall. People were resistant in the beginning, but paywall was the last act of desperation to save the magazine. I think in magazines, advertising will continue to play a very important role. We can’t disregard the role of advertising.”
Commenting on the success rate of paywall, Nikhil said, “It depends on what sort of paywall you set up i.e. if you’re doing a hard paywall, a metered paywall, or propensity wall. Mint as a brand, we do about 25% of our revenue on digital.” From being a free independent website to a revenue-generating website, paywall seems to be working wonders for mint.
Sharing a global overview, Jean expressed, “ When I’m looking into the market especially in the Netherlands, I've seen that publishers have been helping shaping the internet by offering a lot of free content during the last decade. At the moment what we see that we need to shift that high quality content has to be paid well.”
“In the beginning, the concept of paywall was flat but suddenly it’s going quite high up because now readers are getting used to it,” Jan added.
