TheJournal.ie's CE

1. The online news business
What I’ve learned over the last 18 months and
why i’m optimistic about the future
@brianfallon, CEO, TheJournal.ie

2. A quick introduction...

4. # Site Name Unique Users (‘000) # Site Name Unique Users (‘000)
1 Google 2,293 11 Independent.ie 841
2 Facebook 1,821 12 Federated Publishing 828
3 Microsoft Sites 1,717 13 BBC Sites 825
4 Yahoo Sites 1,519 14 New York Times Sites 802
5 Distilled Media 1,422 14 Apple 788
6 Glam Media 1,226 16 Irish Times Group 787
7 RTE.ie 1,121 17 VEVO 775
8 Ask Network 991 18 Viacom 707
9 Wikipedia 982 19 Eircom 650
10 Amazon 957 20 eBay 649

5. Irish Online News Market
Traffic By Publication (000’s of unique users)
900
675
450
225
0
May-11 Jul-11 Sep-11 Nov-11 Jan-12 Mar-12 May-12
Source: ComScore
TheJournal.ie Independent.ie
IrishTimes.com RTE.ie
IrishExaminer.com BBC
DailyMail.co.uk

6. 2 major trends in the news
business right now...

7. 1. Readers are moving online...

8. Newspaper circulation is
falling...
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
Jan 2005 Jun 2009 Dec 2011 Jun 2014 Dec 2016 Jun 2019 Dec 2021
Source: ABC Island of Ireland Report, Internal Projections
Irish Independent
Irish Times
Irish Examiner

9. Internet usage is
exploding...
Irish Internet Usage (% of population)
100
75
50
25
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Source: EuroStat, Red C Decoding Digital Trends, Internal Projections
Desktop Internet usage
Smartphone/Tablet Usage

10. But is that good news for
online publications?

11. ...not necessarily...

12. Online readers have instant
access to unlimited free content...

13. And the majority are not reading
content produced in Ireland
Percentage of Irish internet traffic that landed on Irish publishers
9%
91%
Irish Publisher Non-Irish Publisher
Source: ComScore Key Measures Ireland

14. And they don’t really want
to pay for news either
• The New York Times expects a upper
bound of 5% of online readers to convert
to online subscription

15. 2. Advertisers are (slowly)
moving online

16. Online ad Spend is the
only ad sector growing
Online Ad Spend Ireland (% of total spend)
16.00%
12.00%
8.00%
4.00%
0%
2009 2010 2011

17. ..but not as fast at it should!
The Entitlement Gap
% Time Spent vs % Ad Spend by medium
50%
46%
Entitlement Gap worth
38%
~€200m per annum
33% 33%
28%
25%
23%
13% 14%
11%
7%
3%
0% 0%
TV Radio Print Internet Mobile
Time Spent Ad Spend

18. ...and advertisers have
unlimited choice too

19. So is it possible to earn enough
money online to pay for
journalism?

20. Let’s do some
(beermat) maths...

21. First, what’s the size of the audience
we can sell/sell to...
• Top 3 Irish Sites are tied:
• ~700k users per month
• ~35m page impressions per month

22. 1. Advertisers
• Potential revenue from advertising: €3.8m
• 35 million pages/month with 3 ads per page gives 105 million ad
impressions/month or 1.26 billion per annum
• News sites can earn at least €2 to €4 per 1000 ad impressions. Taking
the average, this adds another €3.8m of revenue
• Note: does not include revenue from mobile advertising

23. 2. Subscriptions
• Potential revenue from subscriptions: €3.3m
• 3% of 700,000 unique users is 21,000 paying users
• Using the NYT entry level subscription of $195/annum (€155) gives
annual revenue of €3.3 million (or €5.4 if 5% conversion)

24. Total Revenue: €7.1m
(or if optimistic €10m+)

25. How much journalism can you
afford with that?

26. Here’s THE reason I’m not worried
about the future of journalism
• If TheJournal.ie had revenue of
€7m we could afford a newsroom
of approx 80 journalists!

27. 5 reasons i’m optimistic
about the future

28. 1. Online is due a lot of growth
(And as our growth continues, we’ll be able to
hire a lot more journalists)

29. 2. Journalists have more sources
for stories than ever before
(Open & Collaborative Journalism)

30. 3. Journalists can tell stories
in exciting new ways
(Interactive Multimedia)

31. 4. People have never been
more engaged in the news
(Social & Mobile are changing the game)

32. 5. Lots of change = lots of
opportunity!

33. Finally, what public policy do
we need?

34. Public Policy Changes:
• Defamation reform for user generated
content
• Open Government:
• Open Data
• Open Courts
• Open RTÉ

35. Questions?