Rise of Monetisation and Customisation of Reader Experience - will 2019 be the year paid content go up in Asia?

HONG KONG,Nov. 9,2018 -- Digital Media Asia 2018,organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA),discusses how the current society is shifting with technology disruption with various parties from all over Asia.

Digital Media Asia 2018 organized by WAN-IFRA

With digital advertising unable to make up for the huge falls in print advertising revenue*,news publishers are seriously considering taking the paid route after encouraging signs. Singapore Press Holdingswas an early starter,embarking on a paid subscription model over 13 years ago which has evolved over significantly over time. Last year,Indonesia's Kompas Dailylaunched its paid website,kompas.id,which carries premium content over its free,advertising-funded cousin,kompas.com. And more Asian publishers will be following suit.

At Digital Media Asia 2018,industry leaders from all the region's major news organisations are gathering in Hong Kong on November 7-9,2018to explore the various evolving business models in the news world. They also celebrate the success stories of the early adopters,which have experimented with a variety of approaches such as hard,metered,freemium and hybrid paywalls,micropayments,reader donations and memberships,and tapped into new revenue streams. Speakers from publishers such as Germany's BILD,Switzerland's Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ)and Malaysiakinishare how they have grown digital subscription income,which is far less volatile than income from third-party platforms and programmatic buying. They talk about how they have determined readers' propensity to pay and persuaded audiences to pay for quality content.

According to WAN-IFRA's 2018 World Press Trendsreport,traditional revenue sources continue to come under pressure globally,registering a four and eight percent fall for print circulation,and advertising respectively*. Despite this,print media continues to drive publishers' bottom line globally,while digital circulation revenue has increased by 155% in the last five years as more users pay for online content*. And there is a lot more potential for growth.

Personalising user experience to drive engagement and subscription

Early pioneers in digital subscriptions have moved into personalising the delivery of news products to drive reader engagement,and ultimately,subscriptions. At NZZ,machine-learning algorithms help personalise the user experience and its paywall,enabling the company to quintuple customer conversion in the last three years. Over at Fairfax Australia,deep customer insights and engagement metrics shaped this year's redesign of its sites such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne in pursuit of its ambitious paid membership goals.

Creating sustainable revenue streams

At Digital Media Asia,speakers from Reuters News Agencyand Google encourage the exploration of new ground in non-traditional partnerships which extend beyond publishers' usual reader,media or advertising clients,while early movers in the media blockchain space,such as CoinDesk,Forkast.news and Smartchain Media cut through all the hype,demystify the technology and tokenomics,and explain why there is a future on the blockchain.

Digital Media Asia 2018 Conference sessions

Transformation and business models

Go local: driving revenue with local communities

Native advertising as premium ad revenue

Non-traditional partnerships

Digital marketing using AI

New ways of creating premium content

Digital media consumption trends in Asia

Digital subscription

Engagement and personalisation

Instagram stories school

Video for social media

Data for business intelligence

Blockchain for the media industry

Product development and innovation

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* Source: WAN-IFRA World Press trends 2018 - Print advertising revenues globally fell by 8.3% in 2017 while digital advertising revenues rose by 5.38%. However note that print is falling from a base of US$51.4b globally,while digital has a much smaller base of only US$11.4b. (WAN-IFRA 2018 World Press Trends slides 24,43 and 48,hereinafter known as "WPT")

Media contact:

Wilson

Email: wilson.leong@wan-ifra.org

Tel: +65 6562 8446

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181108/2294063-1