Making money from digital content: the Times way

Zach Leonard, digital publisher of Times Media, took time out yesterday at the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) conference, in London, to talk to Journalism.co.uk about sticky content and making money out of digital publication.

"Our users and readers are not exclusively ours, we would love it if they were but they are very promiscuous. They may come to us for sports grabs or because they like the particular way we cover rugby or they like The Game [football supplement] as a specific destination," said Mr Leonard.

"But to say that we depend exclusively on that person, for their entire diet of sport, is quite naive and we recognise that, so we have to be the best on, and the most attractive to, that particular person on that topic.

"The challenge is just how many of those things can you be great at and how many of those that you can be just good enough on."

Mr Leonard had earlier told the conference that business at Timesonline was booming and that it had just recorded over nine million monthly users.

"We know that across all the different properties and sub-properties that we have got we're more likely to get people stuck to us just because of the way we design the site, the way we interrupt the experience. If people are reading a sports article it's with a bit of current news, which could even be about Iraq.

"To be able to do that, to create that stickiness, that loyalty to us, is our goal because it generates advertising."

He added that the success of fledgling products like the Baddiel and Skinner podcats had brought a new audience to its digital products.

"If you had asked us a few years ago whether we would be getting into multi-media we would have said 'yeah, I guess so, it makes sense.' But it was not until we did the Baddiel and Skinner podcast that we actually started to see a real interest into our music area on Timesonline, but it had actually had been up there for about six months."

He added: "We are not an audio business, I would not say that we compete against radio or TV directly, but we do offer a rich media experience so if you like podcasts and want to know what Kanye West is doing tonight you can get an interview and understand his views of music."

Mr Leonard said that revenue from these content areas was advertising driven, but he was quick to point out that he did not intend to rely solely on advertising revenue.

"Paid for models work if the users receives added value, that's just the science of 'I couldn't get this anywhere else' and for this people are very willing to pay.

He added: "If you look at general media, even if there is a fantastically popular supplement and its online equivalent, like The Game, its probably that we couldn't ever charge for that, the reason being that we see those things as an extension of one another.

"If you listen to the podcast online you are becoming part of The Game community, so from a content perspective that is one that I don't think we could charge for."

The trick, according to Leonard, is recognising what parts of your content are unique and to whom.

"We have over two hundred years of content available," he said.

"Coming to areas like the law we have a tremendous legal archive, which to a certain audience is incredibly valuable.

"They have the ability, as a business audience, to pay and they are comfortable with that kind of thing, a business based subscription.

"We are going to be experimenting with this in the business area, B2B, and also in consumer concepts as well."

As an example of where a paid for service could work for the consumer market Mr Leonard told the conference that the Times' archive contained, amongst other things, literary reviews written by important literary figures, which he believed could have unique value to a specific section of the digital readership.

"I think at the consumer end, where you think about the depth of content across things like books, we can really go back in history and look at some really rich content around that, that may well be an interesting area to pursue.

"If you can then couple that with an exclusive interview with the Booker Prize winner, when that gets announced, it all of a sudden becomes an interesting thing."

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