Mediaboss Marketing

For those launching metered digital subscriptions models, the word paywall is one they often try to distance themselves from.

Most tend to prefer a clear distinction to be made between a 'hard' wall, such as was implemented by the Times, and as of next month the Sun, in the UK, and metered models, as put in place by the New York Times in 2011.

Press+, which enables publishers to set up a metered model, is equally clear about the difference between the two. In fact, the word 'paywall' is banned in their offices.

"We're talking about a meter which is radically different," co-chief executive Steven Brill told Journalism.co.uk. "The reason it's so different is with the meter if you do it right you don't give up any of your advertising revenue online and you don't give up any of your voice in the community online."

Back when Press+ first launched, in late 2009, the word paywall caused them a bit of a headache.

"It took us till the end of 2010, beginning 2011, before we got anyone to launch" Brill explained. "People really didn't understand that we were not talking about a paywall."

Of course, times have since changed in the US, but Brill said that Press+'s new London-based business development director Michael Hull is finding similar reactions today in Europe, four years later.

"In the initial conversations he has people who are scared. It's like they're jumping off a cliff and they're going to go deep into waters, they don't know how cold the water is, how rocky the water is below, whether they're going to get killed or not. And what they don't know is 'am I giving up all my ad revenue, hoping I'm going to get some reader revenue?'.

"When in fact it's much more like taking a very slow walk into a swimming pool at the shallow end which has 10 or 20 steps, and you just take it a step at a time as you adjust your meter."

"In the US when we talk to newspaper publishers, everybody understands it, but we're starting over outside the US where people are just now learning about this model," he added.

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How Press+ is riding the wave of the metered model into Europe