Monday 14th August: Micropayments still aren't dead (yet)

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I saw the news about Blendle pulling its micropayments service late last week and swore not to comment on it because nothing provokes more opinions in my inbox than micropayment stories. However I’ve seen so many declarations that this means micropayments are dead that I might as well throw in my two pennies worth here.

Blendle had tried both micropayments and an all-you-can-read subscription service to articles from a range of publishers. Of its 1 million+ registered users in the Netherlands, only 150,000 had ever actually made a micropayment. But does its failure really mean micropayments won’t work in another form? Of course not.

Reducing friction is key to making small payments work, and having to convince people to download an app is a big leap. My opinion on this hasn’t changed much since this piece I wrote for WNIP a few years back: micropayments will only work once the tech is seamless (probably Google/browser-led), and in the meantime publishers should look at day passes or similar to ‘court’ readers into a longer-term paying relationship.

P.S. Musk’s promised per-article payment system is now officially 2.5 months late

For the news media industry, the rise of AI is a double-edged sword. While some publishers are using it to churn out news stories regardless of how their audiences receive them, local news titles are considering how it can provide them with a major point of differentiation. Here, Chris pulls out the key findings from a recent Enders Analysis report into the state of local media in the UK.

It’s hard to see how BuzzFeed is going to turn this around sustainably. The potential of AI to replicate their buzzy social content will undoubtedly help with reducing their costs, but that’s no way to build a respected brand long-term. “We figured out how to make some good cakes,” Jonah Peretti said, “but we still have to build out the bakery that can scale this and make more content experiences like this, widely distributed across our network.” You need skilled staff to keep making good cakes though, mate.

BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine has celebrated its highest revenue edition in 15 years. The May edition, which included a pass offering two-for-one entry into 416 gardens around the UK, sold 164,576 copies on the newsstand and generated £1.4million in retail sales value (£8.50 per issue). Key to this success was a multimedia sales and marketing campaign, even involving social influencers for the first time alongside national TV and print coverage.

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