Paying For Success: When Audiences Grow More Quickly Than Ad Revenue

"Free" has always been the cornerstone of digital content, but the repeated failure of paid content to break out of a niche has left many content genres focusing even more keenly on ad-supported strategies. Audiences are responding in kind, spending more time with more content at more online and mobile destinations than ever before, in turn driving more content license fee payments. But content providers are increasingly finding themselves unable to square the circle of ad monetization, failing to keep pace with increased content costs. Things are coming to a head, with many content owners now seeking an even larger share of revenue just as the economic downturn starts to weaken the online ad market. To navigate through these troubled waters, content owners are having to reassess core strategic objectives and in some cases pursue counterintuitive strategies.