Micro-billing: the key to charging for media content

Good news for telemedia microbilling companies: a recent study by media consultancy Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates has found that consumers are not going to be that willing to pay subscriptions for online news services, preferring instead to pay small amounts for each article they access.

The survey of 2600 consumers in the UK conducted in November as News International prepares to start charging for content, suggests that even a monthly sub of as little as £2 for a single news site will not be popular – especially, if all major news organisations introduce it at once.

Instead, the report’s findings show that micropayments for individual articles would be a much more popular – and workable – option, allowing anyone to look at whatever they want, whenever they want.

“Per article charges allow users to remain promiscuous so would be the best way for the sector to pursue payment from most users, who prefer to mix and match news sources,” the report concludes. “If all newspaper websites charged for access using article charges of 10p, the likely take up doubles compares to a monthly charge of £2.”

The study backs up what many in the telemedia sector have long been lobbying the media for – very vocally at Telemedia360 in Liverpool in October in particular. Some newspapers, such as the Washington Post and the Financial Times have managed to create and sustain a subs model from day one. Others, especially in the mainstream, tabloid market, are unlikely to really benefit from trying to get subscribers on board. Their fortunes lie in these so called promiscuous readers hitting them every now and again.

The model is also one that will, in time, also be applied to UGC services – mainstream and adult – whereby the monetisation lies in microbilling for individual hits, rather than trying to buy people’s loyalty. Sure, there is a loyalty angle to this, but really the monetisation revolves around allowing for users to hit what they like, when and where they like and charging them a small amount to do it.

The trouble is, you need a trusted, effective, one-click payment service to do it with, so that buying anything from anywhere is not a hassle or passwords and usernames, PIN numbers, security codes and so on.

And this is where telemedia comes in. Billing services are flourishing, in a sense, as the scramble to get billing tools in front of consumers grows apace. Payforit3.0 is coming in March, aimed squarely at trying to tap into web billing via mobile, but the real prize is for those out there that have the billing tools that can be easily adapted to microbilling for media and UGC content. We’ve been doing it for years and now Rupert Murdoch et al need you… darn it, the public need you.

In fact its rather essential that telemedia billing does make paying for online content more palatable: I for one think that Rupert Murdoch is fighting a losing battle trying to reign in the web. If someone goes looking for a story and finds it on one of his sites, but has to subscribe to read it, they will go elsewhere. Ideally they will look for a free version, but – and this assumes that the media industry works together on this – will go to the source where they pay the least and in the easiest way. And that brings us right back to microbilling.

As a journalist I want to get paid for writing all this. As a consumers I want it for free (or at the very least for a very, very small charge). With my consumer hat on I will probably forgo some aspects of quality to save money. All the media companies really have is their brand and trust in that brand. That is what they are selling, not the content per se.

I also strongly believe that if you start micro-charging for content on news sites, people will soon arrive at the decision that a subscription could be a better deal for them if they find themselves at the same site all the time. And that is where it gets interesting. But that is some way off, and perhaps by then Murdoch senior and his old school view of the media won’t be with is anymore.