Nielsen asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries, if they’d pay for online news and entertainment they now get for free. The answer is a definite “maybe” (pdf).
As expected, the vast majority (85%) prefer that free content remain free. But when asked to focus on specific types of content, survey participants are more willing to at least consider paying for particular categories, especially if they have done so before.
Online content for which consumers are most likely to pay—or have already paid—are those they normally pay for offline, including theatrical movies, music, games and select videos such as current television shows. These tend to be professionally produced at comparatively high costs.
Consumers are least likely to pay for content that is essentially homegrown online, often by other consumers at fairly low cost. These include social communities, podcasts, consumer-generated videos and blogs.
In between are newspapers, magazines, Internet-only news sources and radio news and talk shows—created by professionals. Yet much of their content has basically become a commodity, readily available elsewhere for free.
Whatever their preferences, consumers worldwide generally agree that online content will have to meet certain criteria before they shell out money to access it:
- Better than three out of every four survey participants (78%) believe if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.
- At the same time, 71% of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.
- Nearly eight out of every ten (79%) would no longer use a web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost.
- As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it—34% think so while 30% do not; and the remaining 36% have no firm opinion.
- But they are far more united (62%) in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share with whomever they want.
Media companies will almost certainly not abandon advertising; and consumers will doubtless still see ads along with paid content. For the 47% of respondents who are willing to accept more advertising to subsidize free content, that may be tolerable. Yet it will probably not sit well with the 64% who believe that if they must pay for content online, there should be no ads, concludes Nielson.
In related news, Devicescape’s Q4 2009 survey found a continued resistance to paying for Wi-Fi.
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Their 4Q 2009 survey found:
- An overwhelming number of respondents expect device manufacturers to build Wi-Fi into their devices;
- People are making buying decisions based on built-in Wi-Fi capabilities;
- A hassle free experience to access Wi-Fi is a must, meaning no pin or password;
- Intelligence is expected—people want their device to automatically switch between Wi-Fi and/or 3G networks based on what is best for the application;
- Free Wi-Fi is a must for many respondents;
- 98% of respondents log onto Wi-Fi daily with 57% of them logging on more than five times a day.
Devicescape is a leading provider software that makes mobile devices easy to set up and use.
