At the beginning of the 17th century, the first newspaper was introduced. In the subsequent ages, the news industry has faced enormous changes. In the last century, traditional publishers used a two-sided platform, with two money-side users, namely readers and advertisers. With the launch of the internet, the structure of such platforms transformed since traditional publishers had to respond to the changing business models of for instance NU.nl. The latter is one of the major providers of short online news articles in the Netherlands. The company allows users to have access to a wide variety of topics. NU.nl also uses a two-sided platform, but with only one money-side, the advertisers. The readers are the subsidy-side of this platform, allowing people to use the service without the need of a subscription. The introduction of companies like NU.nl, forced traditional publishers to also provide their news articles online. Causing a transition in the market from paper- to online articles.
Even though a decline in readers can be observed for traditional publishers, still a vast amount of consumers crave for in-depth articles with background information. Blendle, a new online news platform, responded to a customer group which prefers online articles with background information, without the need of having a subscription for traditional publishers. They only have to pay the articles they want to read. In this way users can compose their own newspaper-magazine bundle with the articles they are interested in. On average, users pay €0,20 per article, of which 70% goes to the publisher. The other 30% is revenue for Blendle.
Each business model has its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of NU.nl are the free offering of a wide variety of topics, providing users to absorb a lot of news in a short period, and the possibility to update news and articles at any time. However, the business model of NU.nl also has a number of downsides. Users consume the service for free, so NU.nl relies on income from the advertisement side. Advertisements are based on personal user data, which can be perceived as annoying and as an invasion on someone’s privacy. Lastly, NU.nl lacks in-depth articles, and is therefore not able to serve the whole market.
Blendle focusses on another segment of the market, namely the consumers who wants to read in-depth articles, online. Their main advantage is the wide offering of articles from most traditional publishers. Another advantage is that users do not need to subscribe. However, even though customers can limit their cost by paying per article, the cost of reading one is relatively high compared to traditional media. This is a downside of using Blendle.
Hence, the news market has faced a major change in the last decades which will continue in the upcoming years. The future will disclose which players and business models will remain, and which will disappear.
