Moves towards charging online gaining momentum

Valerie | 02 Sep 2009, 17:27

Fresh from the recent Edinburgh International Television festival, where one of the key topics discussed was business models for online charging, a micropayment network is being developed in the UK, and could be active by next summer.

Due to be implemented as part of the Digital Britain commitment from the Technology Strategy Board, it also unveiled a £2 million fund for those with interesting ideas for applications and platforms.

Head of the TSB team Nick Appleyard told the Guardian:

“Once the beautiful future of micropayments is proved in this environment, you can then extend that launch to the external internet.”

Appleyard also commented that revenue models should be worked out together by content publishers, broadcasters, ISPs and banking providers: cooperation is necessary, he stressed.

The announcement comes as a number of companies have indicated in recent months that they are considering payment models, including RTL, ITV and FT.com.

Start-up Journalism Online also recently announced it would help publishers charge for online content, including all-you-can-read or pay-per-article schemes.  With affiliate agreements signed with publishers representing 506 newspapers and magazines and a Web audience of more than 90 million monthly visitors, the company has suggested that they could generate an annual $50 to $100 per subscriber from the websites’ most active 10 per cent of viewers with minimal loss of visitors.

It follows similar plans from News Corp that it was in talks with rival publishers about forming a consortium to charge for online news.

As this blog asks, could micropayments prove the ‘saviour’ of the British newspaper industry as publishers seek to increase online revenue amidst slowing advertising income?

This Marketing Week article draws an interesting parallel between the fundamentally different models for providing on and off line content:

“... in the real world, you need to make the content experience rich enough to charge for it; in the online world, you need to make the distribution experience broad enough for consumers to value it.”

As news providers increasingly reconsider and re-evaluate the sustainability and probability of their business models in the digital age, no doubt they will be closely watching for the possible start of a trend towards the adoption of micropayments.