[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #564: No More "First Click Free"

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OPLIN 4cast #564: No More "First Click Free"
October 18th, 2017

[image: Hand on computer mouse] Early this year, the *Wall Street Journal*
decided they were losing money by letting users access content behind their
subscription paywall through Google’s “First Click Free” program. With
their full content hidden from the open web, *WSJ* content fell in search
rankings, and traffic from Google fell 44%
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/wsj-ends-google-users-free-ride-then-fades-in-search-results>.
But at the same time, their subscription conversions increased by fourfold.
This news undermined Google’s assertion of the benefit of providing users
with a limited amount of free content on a daily basis, without the
frustration of encountering subscription paywalls. On October 2, Google
announced it was ending FCF in favor of “flexible sampling,” where
publishers will be able to determine how much--if any--free content they
will provide. (Google recommends 10 free articles per month.) Google is
also looking at ways it can leverage what it knows about users, and
streamlining the subscription process.

   -
   - Driving the future of digital subscriptions
   <https://www.blog.google/topics/journalism-news/driving-future-digital-subscriptions/>
   [The Keyword | Richard Gingras] “‘Try before you buy’ underlines what many
   publishers already know—they need to provide some form of free sampling to
   be successful on the internet. If it’s too little, then fewer users will
   click on links to that content or share it, which could have an effect on
   brand discovery and subsequently may affect traffic over time.”
   - Google Could Do More To Help Journalism
   <http://fortune.com/2017/10/03/google-help-journalism/> [Fortune | Adam
   Lashinsky] “There’s a catch, of course. More than one. Google hopes to get
   between publishers and their customers and also to take a cut of the action
   for its troubles. Were Google serious about helping the news business it
   could forgo the commission altogether and prejudice its search algorithm *in
   favor* of subscriptions–on the theory that a publisher asking for money
   must be proud of its offering and therefore likely is offering something
   good.”
   - Google: First Click Free is over, being replaced by Flexible Sampling
   <https://searchengineland.com/google-first-click-free-replaced-flexible-sampling-283667>
   [Search Engine Land | Greg Sterling] “Gingras said Google is going to use
   ad-targeting tactics to identify which audiences are most likely to
   subscribe. [...] He added that different offers and content might be shown
   to different audiences based on a ‘propensity to pay’ or subscribe.”
   - Google's latest move means you actually have to pay for news
   <http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-ditches-first-click-free-policy>
   [Wired | Bonnie Christian] “Google’s announcement has come hot on the heels
   of Facebook’s own decision to give a helping hand to publishers. CEO Mark
   Zuckerberg announced it would cooperate by adding subscriptions to Instant
   Articles. 'If people subscribe after seeing news stories on Facebook, the
   money will go directly publishers who work hard to uncover the truth, and
   Facebook won’t take a cut,' he wrote.”

*From the Ohio Web Library <http://ohioweblibrary.org>:*

   - Optimizing a Menu of Multiformat Subscription Plans for Ad-Supported
   Media Platforms.
   <http://proxy.oplin.org:2059/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=312ebaba-a515-4370-92f4-2ac69aec1d19%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#>
   (Journal Of Marketing, March 2017, pp. 45-63 | Vamsi Kanuri, Murali
   Mantrala, and Esther Thorson)
   - A Shared Mission.
   <http://proxy.oplin.org:2059/ehost/detail/detail?vid=8&sid=6cff0c63-ae9c-4fcc-b285-f675412f32f5%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#>
   (Editor & Publisher, Mar. 2016, pp. 24-25 | Matt DiRienzo)
   - Paying for what was free: lessons from the New York Times paywall.
   <http://proxy.oplin.org:2068/ehost/detail/detail?vid=19&sid=ce38364d-1f1c-433e-b971-2e670a988dc0%40sessionmgr120&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#>
   (Cyberpsychology, Behavior And Social Networking, December 2012, p682-687 |
   Jonathan Cook and Shahzeen Attari)

------------------------------
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