Emap to put trade titles behind pay wall
Emap, publisher of B2B magazines such as Retail Week, Architects’ Journal and New Civil Engineer, is to make all its online content paid-for only.
David Gilbertson, Emap CEO, has said all sites within its Inform division, which includes magazines such as Drapers, Screen and Construction News, will start bundling web access with subscription packages, according to paidContent. Retail Week will move to a pay wall on 13 November.
“We’ve had a free-to-air approach with our [websites] in the last 12 months and our view is that B2B success is based on distinctiveness and a highly targeted audience that will pay for that content. So we’re moving all our sites to a subscription-based model,” Gilbertson told paidContent.
Emap is the latest publisher to investigate the pay wall. The Financial Times, which already has a hybrid charging model, plans to introduce a pay-per-article model (nma 7 August 2009). News Corp head Rupert Murdoch has made several announcement about his plans to introduce pay walls across titles including The Sun and Times Online.
Eden Bidco, a joint-venture between Apax and Guardian Media Group, bought Emap’s B2B titles in March last year.
This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk
