Cracking the content monetization code

How to monetize content is the question confronting many publishers. Doing that with the least disruption to their businesses and relationships with staff, readers, advertisers and vendors while maximizing content revenue is key to success.

Introducing a digital model with a paywall is often the first solution that comes to mind, but the contentmonetization trend has moved beyond that simplistic strategy.

The opportunities are now multilayered, and the technology and operations required to maximize those opportunities have become complex.

Steve Dempsey, Group Director of Publishing Products for Mediahuis, an Ireland-based publisher of newspapers and media in multiple European countries, shared their story with the audience of an October 2022

E&P Reports sponsored Webinar.

Mike Blinder, Publisher of Editor & Publisher, was the host and Paul Mccarthy-brain, CEO of Flip-pay, and Rick Vandervoorn, VP of Business Development at Flip-pay, joined them.

Although there are differences between the news publishing business in Europe and North America, Mediahuis found itself in a place just a few years ago familiar to almost anyone in the publishing business. Its only revenue stream was from advertising.

“Unlike North America, Ireland didn’t have a history of paying for online subscriptions, making our monetization goals more challenging. We knew it would be difficult to explain the value of a news subscription and flip readers from buying a newspaper to buying access to online content,” Dempsey said.

Dempsey explained that Mediahuis’s new strategy started with building on its position of delivering credible news products and expanding into a diversified business model. It also wanted a single, simplified technology stack that would offer a rapid route to market, flexible deployment, agile scalability, an efficient user experience and quick and sustainable results.

“When we started researching vendors, we didn’t choose one just because it was big and expensive. We were concerned with being just another client,” Dempsey said. “We were also considering Flip-pay, a smaller company, but one with which we already had a trusted relationship.”

Mccarthy-brain said Flip-pay won the Mediahuis business because it could provide a single end-toend platform, including paywall, subscription management, account management, financials, analytics and reports, mobile app integration, home print delivery, payments and seamless integration with existing providers.

“We work with Mediahuis as a true technical partner to innovate its new business model as it matures. We help Mediahuis develop and test new ideas and introduce to the marketplace quickly,” Mccarthy-brain said.

“That ease of collaboration is another reason we chose Flip-pay. It’s like talking with a colleague at the water cooler. Paul and his team are always ready to discuss an idea and whether it’s possible. They won’t let us do the wrong thing and make the same mistakes as other publishers,” Dempsey said.

Vandervoorn has received excellent responses when he introduces Flip-pay to North American publishers. Many voice their frustration with the more established competitors. They find them expensive, inflexible, slow, and don’t treat customers like partners.

“It has also helped that Flip-pay was selected as Digiday’s 2020 Technology Award winner as Best Subscription Platform over better known players. Flip-pay was selected as “the leading subscription platform to drive engagement, loyalty and revenue.”

“Flip-pay’s experience with Mediahuis is of great value to North American publishers. With multiple properties in six countries, Mediahuis must comply with the much stricter E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about gathering and managing customers’ personal data,” Vandervoorn said. “It puts Flippay in a better position to help North American publishers as U.S. dataprivacy regulations change and the growing importance of 1st party data.”

According to Dempsey, Mediahuis has transitioned from working on technology infrastructure and capabilities to utilizing them operationally. Once it launched two sites with Flip-pay, Mediahuis slowly introduced other bundles on other regional titles. It then accelerated the packaging of various products through different portals at different times.

“We still have much to learn and do to maximize content monetization, but the results have been good during the first three years. We started with no digital subscribers to the Independent, Ireland’s best-selling newspaper in 2020. We introduced the new paywall, and within eight weeks, we had 8,000 digital subscribers. By the end of that first year, they had increased to 35,000 and, by the end of 2021, to 50,000. Currently, we’ve generated 62,000 digital and print subscriptions,” Dempsey said.