Social Machinery

Many traditional media CEOs, especially Rupert Murdoch consider that the answer to the big question about how to monetize internet is about offering paid content. In the other hand, we heard more and more people saying that they are not willing to pay for digital content, probably spoiled by internet “free” access.

In order to understand consumers’ willingness to pay for digital content, Nielsen surveyed more than 27.000 people from 50 different countries revealing how many of them would pay for different type of content on internet (movies, music, games, newspapers, blogs and more).

Even do the results look quite optimistic for content like Movies, Music and games there is a basic prerequisite that consumers have before they pay for this kind of content. Content needs to be exclusive or hard to find anywhere on internet for free. I believe this precondition is extremely difficult to accomplish in a widespread internet world.

Nielsen also found that nearly 8 out of 10 people (79%) would stop using a site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost. Again, this is shows that exclusiveness is key when consumers decide to pay for digital content.

At the bottom of the chart, you can find mainly user generated and homegrown online content including social communities, podcasts, consumer-generated videos and blogs. User’s willingness to pay for it is relatively low as is it considered low-cost and free.

Besides consumer willingness to pay, it seems to be a global agreement among users that content will have to meet certain criteria before they paid for it. For instance, 78% of the survey participants believe if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.

Also, 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.

Finally, users also challenge the current intellectual property rights paradigm; 62% of the participants believe that once they buy a piece of content, they should be able to make copies or share with whomever they want.