Complete Story
03/24/2015
Cox paper sites to adopt metered paywalls
Cox Media Group will move its paid newspaper sites from a hard paywall to a metered pay system by July, part of an ongoing plan to engage users and develop audience via sideways social traffic.
Mark Medici, SVP of audience strategy and group lead for CMG and its flagship paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says the company views social as interwoven with audience development and a crucial distribution channel currently driving 32% of traffic to all of its sites.
In an interview with NetNewsCheck Editor Michael Depp, Medici drills into Cox’s strategy of maintaining paid and free versions of its newspaper sites in each of its markets, and how the free sites are rapidly evolving toward local activities, sports and living content to grab millennial readers.
He says the paid newspaper “My” sites are moving toward an adoption of a Vox-like advertising model. And he notes that Cox’s newspaper and television strategies are converging ever more closely around digital, where a common proprietary content management system encourages “a tremendous amount of innovation.”
