Paid content and silly surveys

17 December 2009

What will consumers pay for content?

The number of surveys to date that we know of is eight.

Eight silly surveys and a total waste of money.

This kind of hypothetical ‘Would you pay?’ question isn’t suitable for a general survey and it isn’t really valid for any kind of discussion forum.

In marketing, the technical term for this kind of discussion is: ‘a total wast of time’. Sorry to lapse into jargon there!

Any direct marketer can tell you how to test the ‘paid content’ premise for any media that exists. You simply do what a scientist would do and test the premise.

This area of marketing is a science and there is no place for theory unless you have plenty of time and someone else’s money to spend.

8 paid content surveys

Here is a summary of the list of surveys to date. You can see the whole article at www.paidcontent.co.uk with links at:

Paid content article

—PCUK/Harris Poll: five percent of 1,888 UK adults said they would pay if their favourite online newspaper began charging

—Gfk: 18 percent of UK adults in international survey of 16,800 said they would pay for “content”, ie. “news, entertainment and information sites such as Wikipedia”.

—Continental: 37 percent of 500 UK adults said they would pay micropayment, larger fee or monthly/annual sub for online newspaper/mag.

—Olswang/YouGov: 19 percent of 1,013 UK adults and 536 teens said they would make micropayments frequently, a subscription or otherwise pay for news articles online, on mobile or ereaders if there was no free alternative.

—Oliver and Ohlbaum: 15 to 20 percent of respondents to a survey of 2,600 UK consumers said they would pay £2 a month for their favourite news website if it was the only one that charged.

—Forrester: 19 percent of 4,711 US consumers said they would make micropayment, pay a sub or buy a bundled print/web/mobile package for online newspaper.

—Boston Consulting Group: 48 percent of 5,083 regular internet users in nine countries, including 506 in UK, said they would pay for online news.

—KPMG: 11 percent of 1,037 people aged 16 and over “currently spend anything on online media” – findings vary for different media types).

Paid content survey summary
The mean proportion of consumers who would pay for online content is 21.8 percent.

Paid content advice from Subscriptions Strategy
Here is what we recommend: discover how many and how much people will pay by running a simple test. It would cost far less than any of these silly ‘surveys’!

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