Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 5.
The question everyone wants to know is how many people actually read News Corp’s high-profile stab at tablet publishing, The Daily? The answer: not nearly enough. Edmund Lee, formerly of Ad Age and now with Bloomberg, got a particularly chatty Zenith Optimedia buyer John Nitti to go on the record that the figure is 120,000 unique readers per week. This would put The Daily nowhere near the 500,000 readers Rupert Murdoch estimated it needs to break even. Kudos to Lee for prying the information out of an ad buyer — and on the record to boot. If the figure is accurate, The Daily might not be long for this world. Staci Kramer at PaidContent reports that one third of the readers are freebies. That’s unsustainable. That’s also too bad. The Daily was a surprisingly bold early move from an old-line publisher to use an unproven new technology. With Amazon entering the tablet market with a cheap tablet — publisher Greg Clayman told the Digiday Mobile conference last week that The Daily would work with tablet platforms outside of Apple’s — the market is sure to continue its breakneck growth. The question is whether News Corp will have the patience to wait until it finds its audience, or if it will cut its losses and chalk it up as a worth, if prohibitively expensive R&D effort.
More in Media
AI-powered professional learning and the battle vs. ‘workslop’: Inside Deloitte’s Scout
Deloitte last month launched Scout as part of its Project 120, the company’s $1.4 billion investment in professional development.
‘The Big Bang has happened’: Reach gets proactive on AI-era referrals, starting with subscriptions
This week, the publisher of national U.K. titles Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star, is rolling out its first paid digital subscriptions – a big departure from the free, ad-funded model it’s had throughout its 120-year history.
Arena Group, BuzzFeed, USA Today Co, Vox Media join RSL’s AI content licensing efforts
Arena Group, BuzzFeed, USA Today Co and Vox Media are participating in the RSL Collective’s efforts to license content to AI companies.