Old Grey Lady lifts up her skirt
The New York Times’ for-pay content, TimesSelect, is free this week by virtue of a deal with the giant Dutch electronics firm Philips. When you click on something like the link to Thomas Friedman’s column, you get an “interstitial” ad about the company, and then when you click again you get a page lined in red, with the Philips name displayed in various prominent locations and both banner and skyscraper-type ads.
This is very similar to the type of ads that Salon.com pioneered a couple of years ago, where readers would be met by an interstitial ad and offered the chance to click through a multi-screen ad to see the content for free, or to sign up and pay. Those ads apparently kept the wolves at bay during some tough times and kept Salon in business. But is it better to have a single sponsor make the whole thing free now and then, or open it right up and just count on advertising to pay the freight?
Having a freebie week definitely exposes some new NYT readers to the content — but will any of them “convert” and become paying subscribers? I’m not so sure.
Related posts:
