PressDisplay: a proven method for newspapers to monetize online content

PressDisplay.com is an online portal that allows users access to the digital editions of over 1,100 newspapers from around the world. Premium users pay for monthly memberships, and publishers receive a royalty for each edition that is read. The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Igor Smirnoff, director of strategic development, to learn more about the site's benefits to newspapers and how the company sees the market now that everyone is jumping on the paid online content bandwagon.

"It is truly premium content," declared Smirnoff regarding PressDisplay's offerings. "This is everything that ever appears in the printed edition. Google doesn't have it." Sometimes even the newspapers' own websites don't carry all the same content - Smirnoff estimated that 30 to 60 percent of what appears in the print edition makes it online. That's because the publications that appear on PressDisplay are an exact replica of the printed page, including all articles, pictures and advertisements.

NewspaperDirect, a Vancouver-based company founded in 1999 as a newspaper print-on-demand service, developed PressDisplay's technology about five years ago. Each day, publishers send a PDF of their newspapers to the company, which NewspaperDirect then digitizes and adds to its database. The main page of the PressDisplay site represents an aggregation of all the newspapers in the database. Users can click through to articles from this main page or browse through specific publications.

Visitors can view the front page of every newspaper for free. Once they access a specific article, a sign in is required. When browsing through a publication, clicking on an article creates a pop-up window with a plain text version. Users then have the option to translate the story into 12 languages, listen to an audio version, bookmark for personal use, or share via a variety of social networks. PressDisplay's search function is also particularly popular, according to Smirnoff, although results come from a limited window of time. "PressDisplay is really positioned as 'today's paper,'" he explained. Thus, archives go back two weeks for individual users and up to three months for library subscribers.

How newspapers make money

"In the beginning we were chasing publishers," recounted Smirnoff. "We were going after them and trying to explain the business model. Now we are being chased by publishers." The monetary benefit to newspapers is simple: each time a user clicks on an article, he or she "purchases" the entire publication for that day. The publisher then receives a standard royalty for each purchased edition; the amount varies depending on the publication, but averages about 25 cents.

NewspaperDirect offers several different types of PressDisplay subscriptions depending on the type of user. Individual consumers can opt for a free membership, which gives access to all front pages and two articles per day. An intermediate plan for $9.95 per month allows the user to view 31 publications per month, or about one a day. The most popular option is the unlimited plan for $29.95 per month. Newspapers receive the same royalty regardless of the status of the user. There are also subscriptions at the corporate level for companies who use newspapers on a professional basis, such as PR agencies, and for libraries. Smirnoff claims 50 million people read digital newspapers in this way around the world, with 1.5 million individual consumers using PressDisplay.

Newspapers have more to gain by partnering with PressDisplay than just an extra revenue stream. Readers are added to ABC figures, while a widget called Adget allows publications to sell video ads on top of traditional print advertising. Moreover, publishers receive detailed reports on each edition that shows what exactly users are reading. This "attention map" details how many copies were sold, the average reading time, how much of the newspaper the user read, which sections were most popular, and several other categories that can help publishers determine what attracts readers and where they lose interest.

Individualized SmartEditions

Another option for newspapers that don't want to open up access to all PressDisplay users is an individualized e-paper called a SmartEdition that only appears on the publication's own website. Publishers create their own pricing plans for these e-editions, giving NewspaperDirect a share of the revenue. Participating publications include the Times, the Washington Post and Le Figaro.

The service costs newspapers nothing for set-up and maintenance, and offers the same features for all publications regardless of the revenue model, including automatically updating with all the latest features. "We do want to make sure that publishers see us not as a vendor, but as a development partner," Smirnoff stated. NewspaperDirect creates individual SmartEditions for about half the newspapers in its database, and currently releases an average of one new SmartEdition each day, according to Smirnoff.

Certain big name newspapers have resisted joining PressDisplay altogether, among them The New York Times, the Financial Times and Le Monde. These publications already have a strong brand and believed they had a sufficient digital presence, but some are now ready to make the jump. "All this protectionism that we have seen from these titles is just not working," claimed Smirnoff. "And they're the ones hurting themselves, really."

"If you compare the SmartEdition of any paper - the smallest paper that we run - I think it is much better, has better functionality and features, and is accessible on many more devices" than certain other large newspapers that don't use it, he added.

Keeping up with the latest technology

One other advantage of PressDisplay comes from its broad compatibility, providing the same access on PCs, Macs and smartphones. New applications are set for release for the iPhone and Blackberry in the coming weeks, with a Palm Pre app coming out in mid-October. The company currently maintains a partnership with e-reader manufacturer iRex whereby anyone that purchases one of their devices gets a free one-month trial to PressDisplay.

"We always warn that, as a publisher, they shouldn't be attached to a specific device," advised Smirnoff. "You don't know what your readers will prefer. So you have to stay 'platform agnostic,' as we call it. And PressDisplay is platform agnostic."

Looking at the big picture

While NewspaperDirect obviously wants to make a profit - which it has been doing for the past few years - Smirnoff sees its role as providing broader benefit to the newspaper industry. "PressDisplay becomes more appealing, of course, the more content - the more sources - we have," he admitted. "But the challenge here is really bigger. We're trying to look at the industry as a whole. We're trying to find what is the way to migrate business from tradition print into digital. How are we doing this? Where is the revenue?"

Regarding recent announcements about paid online content from Google, Journalism Online and Rupert Murdoch, Smirnoff remained skeptical. His company has been around long enough to have seen a number of experiments that claimed to be the saviors of newspapers in the digital realm, few of which lasted very long. The latest ventures could learn a lot by looking at NewspaperDirect's model for getting users to pay for content.

"This actually already exists, if you look at PressDisplay," Smirnoff asserted. "This is exactly what is now being voiced at a higher level, but PressDisplay has been running for a number of years now, quite successfully."