(A quick small post - longer than Twitter, shorter than my normal posts).
I read a few posts yesterday about News Corp threatening to deny Google's spiders access to their sites and this includes the Wall Street Journal. Now, I had the pleasure of negotiating with WSJ when I was with AT&T and even though I got the better of them for AT&T"s Personal Network plan, it created a lasting impression with me. I've also advertised with them many times including during the 2008 General Election. While advertising revenues are important to them, they are clearly focused on subscribers. So I wasn't surprised when Murdoch threatens to block Google.
Hitwise's Bill Tancer put out some great charts that shows what they think Google's traffic is to WSJ and it is a whopping 25%; plus they report that 44% of traffic from Google is new.
WSJ knows this too. WSJ journal sees other print companies who give their content away from free struggle with sales revenue - while it is coming in from the web, it isn't fast enough to replace the crash on the print side.
WSJ has always been about subscriptions first and advertising second. They know what the true hit would be by blocking Google. I bet they don't care about the new traffic number. I bet people will still know about them and the branding from the traffic doesn't matter to them. Their advertising rates are still super high, so the traffic hit while bothersome, probably doesn't make a dent in their overall revenue numbers. Me, I don't think Murdoch is bluffing.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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