London: James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp in Eur-ope and Asia, said figures released by his group to quantify the success of its experiment with paywalls had "gone some distance" to answering the question of whether UK readers would pay for general news on the internet.

But the statistics published by his News International company on Tuesday were derided as vague by analysts and commentators, with one describing them as "chicanery".

The numbers claimed that 105,000 "digital products" of The Times and The Sunday Times had been sold since the paywall went up in July. Of those, more than 50,000 related to people currently paying monthly subscriptions for an iPad edition, for content on Amazon's Kindle or in weekly £2 payments through the website.

Murdoch said the iPad and similar devices represented a strong future for making money out of journalism but added that the company would continue to offer a mix of ways for readers to pay for it.Asked about the popularity of monthly subscriptions on iPad-style devices compared with more piecemeal methods of payment, Murdoch said: "I think that with the metered or micropayment business, particularly in general news, the arithmetic will be so ruthless that you will never be able to [justify] taking the risk on journalism. [But] the tablet is a tremendous product for customers."

Statistics

Several experts questioned the value of the "vague" statistics released, which did not give details of renewal rates or break down how many iPad apps had been sold, although people familiar with the details suggested it was about 20,000 of the 50,000 core subscribers.

George Brock, a former managing editor of The Times and now head of journalism at City University, wrote on his blog that the figure of 105,000 had been cobbled together to provide a six-figure headline sum. "That number is for ‘customer sales' for the past four months. As a method of reporting this doesn't even begin to be convincing," he wrote.

"Any business journalist on either title confronted with this sort of chicanery from another company in the online market would gleefully rip into the executives releasing numbers in such opaque form."

Alex Randall, online trading director for Aegis Media, the media buying group, said: "We've got some numbers but they don't really tell us much.

"The important element from an advertising point of view is who is paying, how long they're spending on the site and which areas of the site they're looking at."NI said the sales figures had been hard to compile and they had debated long and hard how best to present them.

People familiar with the situation said that of the 55,000 "sales" not represented by current subscribers, about 35,000 consisted of single £1 (Dh5.90) "day passes" while the others were bought by weekly subscribers to the internet site or monthly tablet customers who had since cancelled.

View the original article here

or subscribe in as a reader