Yahoo VP of Media: Forget Pay Walls; Making Free Content Work

While everyone else is talking about how to get users to pay for content online—we're looking at you, Steven Brill, News, Corp., and Google—some people are apparently still trying to figure out how to make a buck off content that's free. Or at the very least, free-ish.

Over at Paid Content, Yahoo's VP of Media James A. Pitaro has an Advertising Week-tied guest post headlined "Enough Already About Charging for Content: How to Make the Free Model Work."

To all the media companies planning to erect pay walls around their sites, Pitaro (a Sports Business Journal Forty Under 40 honoree), has something to tell y!ou. (Sorry, we couldn't resist): "The paid model simply won’t work for many of the media businesses now seriously considering it because their users not only want the content to be free—they expect it to be free."

His suggestions for making free content work include partnerships and better advertising deals that go beyond "spots and dots." Apparently advertisers "now want to partner with online sites and be brought in early in the creative process." Hmmm. Let's see how that works for news organizations where editorial and advertising are traditionally kept as separate as church and state.

While you're bringing in advertisers to help shape your content, you might also think about improving your user experience: "Conduct research to understand your users and the competition’s users inside and out," he counsels. "Apply those lessons to meaningful investments in product and design." In other words: Spend money to make money, and when you discover your users (and the competition's users) want free content, give it to them.

Except when it's time to really bolster that free content, charge for content. What? No, seriously: Writes Pitaro, "Within the context of an overall free online environment, there are opportunities for targeted premium businesses and microtransactions. Where there are niche communities of like-minded users, it can make sense to initiate a subscription model."

So, to sum up: Spend a few dollars on competitor audits and research your users. Then undertake a costly redesign and spend some more on more content. Bring in advertisers to help tailor that content. Then charge for it.

Voilà! Now you've made "free" work! Sorry you went broke and lost your audience in the process.