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News sites that offer paid subscriptions, in the main, still show ads to paying users, in much the same way that when you subscribe to a print newspaper or magazine it shows up with ads in it as well.

The reason is the same as in print: ad revenues generally bring in much more than subscriptions do. Here's some data for the newspaper business, for instance: http://ajr.org/2014/02/27/big-shift-reliance-reader-payments... You can see how even with the collapse of newspaper advertising over the last decade, ad revenue is still generally somewhere from 50-70% of overall revenue. So ad revenue is critical, even for subscription pubs.

This is even more true online, because if you make your publication ad-free for subscription users, you're cutting the ads off from the eyeballs the advertisers want most -- the eyeballs of engaged, frequent readers/viewers/whatever, since those are the very people who care enough to buy subscriptions. So doing so drives down the overall value of advertising in your publication.




    > The reason is the same as in print: ad revenues
    > generally bring in much more than subscriptions do
If that's true, wouldn't it be better to not have subscriptions to improve viewership?




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