Digital news purchases: encouraging people to pay worldwide 2023| ��ƽ��

Factors that would trigger people to subscribe or donate to an online newspaper or other news service worldwide as of February 2023

Characteristic	Share of respondents
More valuable content	22%
Ad-free	13%
Cheaper/flexible	32%
Nothing	42%

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Release date

June 2023

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

January to February, 2023

Number of respondents

33,460*

Special properties

among those who do not subscribe

Method of interview

Online survey

Supplementary notes

*Sample was taken from respondents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada.

Citation formats

The factor most likely to trigger news audiences worldwide to subscribe or donate to an online newspaper (or other online news services) would be if subscriptions were cheaper or more flexible. More than 30 percent of respondents in selected markets worldwide cited price and flexibility as the main draws for them. For publishers, then, this is the biggest opportunity to pull in more subscribers. On the other hand, 42 percent of respondents said that nothing would encourage them to invest in online news.

News subscriptions: the state of play

Subscriptions are considered the most important revenue stream for publishers. There is, however, a way to go before paid news content becomes the norm. Free content is widely available and in times of recession and cost-cutting, encouraging consumers to sign up for content they can generally access without paying is challenging.

Do people pay for news?

Paying for news at all remains relatively rare. A global study found that the average percentage of consumers who paid for digital news content in the last year amounted to just 17 percent as of early 2023, and in Japan and the United Kingdom the figure was as low as nine percent. Meanwhile, news avoidance remains a problem. As this worsens and consumers shy away from topics they struggle with, news subscription growth could stagnate.