Like many other industries, the print industry is going more and more digital out of necessity. Take the iconic publication ‘Newsweek’ which has announced it will be going all digital by end of this year. Following this, The Telegraph newspaper has introduced a subscription model to its electronic articles, similar to The Financial Times and The New York Times. Digital subscribers will have to pay in order to access more than 20 articles a month. The newspaper has also introduced two types of subscription packages targeted at international readers.

The newspaper states that it has the most number of subscribers among any other UK newspaper group and the majority of its readers are outside the UK. Similarly, this type of subscription model has permitted The Financial Times digital subscribers to overtake the circulation of print newspapers.

The digital versions of newspapers are a good source of advertising for brokerage companies. Due to the implementation of the new subscription model, The Telegraph hopes to better target its international and domestic audiences.

Of course these publications are well known for being more suitable for brand advertisers (I.E. not priced for direct marketing targets) but with better data it might just become economical. Then again, that’s exactly why we use Real Time Bidding (RTB) to target broader publications such as newspapers; to lower cost and increased targeting possibilities. And while newspapers do not lower prices or block RTB advertisers, that remains our recommended way of advertising on these sites.

The digital era is slowly overtaking the traditional paper-based newspapers, nevertheless there is still an enormous amount of customers whose primary source of information is the print circulation. So for brokers with the budget, employing both tactics in a brand/DM balanced marketing campaign is still the way to go.