IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joinma/v49y2020icp54-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Newspapers' Content Policy and the Effect of Paywalls on Pageviews

Author

Listed:
  • Kim, Ho
  • Song, Reo
  • Kim, Youngsoo

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of newspaper paywalls on daily pageviews, and how their impact varies across newspapers as a function of their content provisioning strategies. Our data consist of daily pageviews of 42 newspapers that introduced a paywall during the eight-year analysis period from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2017. We find that a paywall has a negative impact on daily pageviews for most newspapers, but that the impact varies significantly across them. Newspapers that publish proportionately more articles on politics, business/economics, sports, and general social news tend to perform better with a paywall than newspapers that publish proportionately fewer articles on those topics. Interestingly, the effectiveness varies substantially across news topics. For example, increasing the proportion of business/economics news by 1% is nearly 1.4 times more effective than increasing the proportion of general social news by the same percentage in mitigating the negative impact of a paywall. We also find that newspapers with proportionately more unique content and papers with a more liberal slant experience a smaller drop in pageviews. These results have important managerial implications for newspapers—especially pure-play online news publishers (for whom online advertising is the primary revenue source)—regarding how to develop and manage their content policy with paywall adoptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Kim, Ho & Song, Reo & Kim, Youngsoo, 2020. "Newspapers' Content Policy and the Effect of Paywalls on Pageviews," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 54-69.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:49:y:2020:i:c:p:54-69
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2019.10.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996819300970
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.intmar.2019.10.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoogerheide, Lennart & Kleibergen, Frank & van Dijk, Herman K., 2007. "Natural conjugate priors for the instrumental variables regression model applied to the Angrist-Krueger data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 63-103, May.
    2. Durbin, James & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2012. "Time Series Analysis by State Space Methods," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199641178, December.
    3. Hedibert F. Lopes & Nicholas G. Polson, 2014. "Bayesian Instrumental Variables: Priors and Likelihoods," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1-4), pages 100-121, June.
    4. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro & Michael Sinkinson, 2014. "Competition and Ideological Diversity: Historical Evidence from US Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3073-3114, October.
    5. Chiou, Lesley & Tucker, Catherine, 2013. "Paywalls and the demand for news," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 61-69.
    6. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    7. Christopher A. Sims, 2007. "Thinking about instrumental variables (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 2, pages 83-94, March.
    8. Mark Armstrong Author-Email: mark.armstrong@ucl.ac.uk Author-Workplace-Name: University College of London, 2006. "Competition in Two-Sided Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 668-691, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Inyoung Chae & Jihyeon Ha & David A. Schweidel, 2023. "Paywall Suspensions and Digital News Subscriptions," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 729-745, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 319-364, August.
    2. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé & Michael Sinkinson, 2024. "Media Competition and News Diets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 62-102, May.
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4ec86lkes59hv9tfv77ld1p5fr is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4edekc99or8n2bu86nu4ua8adl is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4edekc99or8n2bu86nu4ua8adl is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ec86lkes59hv9tfv77ld1p5fr is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Armando J. Garcia Pires, 2017. "Media pluralism and competition," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 255-283, April.
    8. Cagé, Julia, 2017. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation: Evidence from French Local Newspapers and Elections, 1944," CEPR Discussion Papers 12198, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Julia Cagé, 2014. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03602440, HAL.
    10. Berman, Nicolas & Brey, Björn & Laurent-Lucchetti, Jeremy, 2023. "Panic Politics in the US West Coast," CEPR Discussion Papers 17874, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Steen, Frode, 2019. "Paywalls and the demand for online news," CEPR Discussion Papers 13651, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/16juu6v6rg8rq8nl0u1grb4jm6 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Kawamura, Kohei & Le Quement, Mark T., 2023. "News credibility and the quest for clicks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    14. Leopoldo Fergusson & Juan Felipe Riaño & B.K. Song, 2020. "Media, Secret Ballot and Democratization in the US," Documentos de Trabajo 18252, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
    15. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/16juu6v6rg8rq8nl0u1grb4jm6 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Marcel Garz & Jonna Rickardsson, 2023. "Ownership and media slant: Evidence from Swedish newspapers," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(1), pages 18-40, February.
    18. Marcus L. Nascimento & Kelly C. M. Gonçalves & Mario Jorge Mendonça, 2023. "Spatio-Temporal Instrumental Variables Regression with Missing Data: A Bayesian Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 29-47, June.
    19. Gehlbach, Scott & Sonin, Konstantin, 2014. "Government control of the media," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 163-171.
    20. Jeremiah Dittmar & Skipper Seabold, 2015. "Media, Markets and Institutional Change: Evidence from the Protestant Reformation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1367, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    21. Julia Cagé, 2014. "Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation," SciencePo Working papers hal-03602440, HAL.
    22. Bertin Martens & Luis Aguiar & Estrella Gomez Herrera & Frank Muller, 2018. "The digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2018-02, Joint Research Centre.
    23. Lawrence Kessler & Murat Munkin, 2015. "Bayesian estimation of panel data fractional response models with endogeneity: an application to standardized test rates," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 81-114, August.
    24. Brian Knight & Ana Tribin, 2019. "The Limits of Propaganda: Evidence from Chavez’s Venezuela," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 567-605.
    25. Torben Stühmeier, 2019. "Media market concentration and pluralism," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 247-259, April.
    26. Frühwirth-Schnatter, Sylvia & Halla, Martin & Posekany, Alexandra & Pruckner, Gerald J. & Schober, Thomas, 2014. "The Quantity and Quality of Children: A Semi-Parametric Bayesian IV Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 8024, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:49:y:2020:i:c:p:54-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-interactive-marketing/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.