Postmedia Sees a Silver Lining with Digital

Postmedia is chiefly responsible for the vast majority of newspapers in Canada. The company publishers the National Post, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and a bunch of others. The media company has reported that it had lost $10.3-million in the most recent quarter, which is a slight drop from the $11.8 million dollar loss the same time last year. Overall revenue dropped 12.6% to $169.5-million — mostly because of weaker print advertising sales, which plummeted 20% to $93.1-million. There is a silver lining to the loses though, which is the continued rise of their digital earnings. Digital revenue from online advertising was a small contributing factor but the big payoff was the continued investment into the Paywall strategy. In May of 2013 Postmedia implemented a paywall system for their entire network of newspapers. The general public can view 10 free articles a month, before being asked to take out a subscription. Print subscribers of the National Post and the Financial Post can continue to get full access to the newspaper's digital properties. Digital readers who do not have a print subscription can pay $0.99 for the first month and then $9.99 a month thereafter. Digital-only readers can also sign up for the reduced subscription rate of $99.50 for an entire year. Digital content, advertising and app sales have generated $24.3 million this quarter, which is a 3% increase from the same period last year. Giving customers free articles and making them pay is just one facet of the overall digital strategy. The company makes available replica editions of all of their Canadian papers via PressReader, which allows domestic and international readers read all of the daily publications for a low subscription cost. Postmedia has also released a series of apps for Android and iOS which continue to generate interest in their digital properties. Postmedia Sees a Silver Lining with Digital is a post from: Good e-Reader

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