Will people be willing to pay for online access to newspapers?

Does it pay to offer news services online for a charge? This question has been asked by most of the newspapers that offer free content online but very few of them dared to test whether this would work. Surprisingly News International, publisher of the Times decided to take the challenge and start to charge for what it considers a quality newspaper.

Comparative results were recently issued by ComScore and it shows that in May, the free-to-access website Timesonline.co.uk attracted 2.79 million unique users in the UK, a slight increase on the level of the previous three months. News International launched its separate Thetimes.co.uk and Thesundaytimes.co.uk websites on 25 May. It made registration compulsory and began redirecting users from the old site on 15 June and started charging for access to both sites on 2 July.

From figures released by ComScore, the combined number of unique visitors to the two new sites (pay sites) has fallen to 1.61 million in July, from 2.22 million in June, and 2.79 million in May. This had an effect on the average number of minutes each user spent on the site which was 7.6 in May, 5.8 in June and 4 in July. Also page views have dropped from 29 million in May to 20 million in June and 9 million in July.

To try to attract users to their pay sites, News International has run an introductory offer offering subscribers 30 days' access for £1. Its normal pricing is £1 for a day's access to The Times and The Sunday Times and £2 for a week, while subscribers to each newspaper get free access to the related website.

No indications have yet emerged from the company as to how many people have subscribed or how much revenue subscriptions have generated.

Will such strategy be effective? Will thetimes.co.uk have to reduce the cost of advertising due to the drop in visitor figures; and if so, will the revenue generated from subscriptions offset the difference? Few people tend to be willing to pay for what other competitors offer for free especially for something as intangible as online access to a newspaper...will News International rethink its strategy to move back again to a free version?

Mining giant BHP makes huge offer for Fertiliser giant

Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the world largest fertilizer producer, on Tuesday has rejected a takeover bid of around $39 billion from BHP Billiton. The bid which is reported to have been made, was for $130 per Potash share, which represents a 20% premium on the share price of last week. The offer is believed to have for cash.

According to the Financial Times, the BHP's offer was rejected on the basis that is was grossly inadequate as it undervalues the company. Potash vowed that it will remain independent as it is believed that it has the right to use a poison pill, that will enable shareholder of the target company (in this case Potash) to acquire additional shares in the company after the takeover for a very discounted price. Such right would make the takeover less attractive as increases the price the acquirer has to pay (or suffers dilution).

Potash refused the bid on the belief that the fertilizer industry is just coming out of the recession and hence it is greatly undervalued. It is believed that PotashCorp shareholders could benefit from the current and potential value of the company as Potash is well geared to take advantage of the upturn. The industry is geared to become more consolidated as the further companies in different countries such as Russia and Canada seek to buy competitors to strengthen their market position.

Today BHP announced that it will take the bid to another level as it said it will take the offer directly to shareholders and hence become hostile...let's see how this huge proposed takeover will eventually end

Peperami will launch first crowed sourced advert

Peperami have launched their crowed sourced advert after they ended their relationship with media agency Lowe which has lasted 15 years. The ad which can be seen below, features Animal, the brand's famous character, who speaks to the viewer about a day spent with his offspring, mini mischievous versions of himself.

The strapline reads "Peperami Nibblers. It's little bits of an animal", referencing the established Peperami strapline "It's a bit of an animal". The ad will first air on ITV1 during 'Coronation Street' on 23 August, with media planned and bought by Mindshare.

The idea for the advert was conceived and scripted by Rowland Davies, an ex-creative director from Munich. Davies entered a competition together with Kevin Baldwin, a copywriter from London, who came up with a press treatment. The team was crowned winner from 1,185 entries to a competition with a $10,000 prize handled by crowdsourcing specialist Idea Bounty.

Peperami managing director, says that Peperami is a brand which is bold enough to experiment with new ideas and advertising techniques in an increasingly consumer-driven world. However this could be a very dangerous idea as sometime entries might be of the level of an ex Munich director and the company might have ended losing time searching for a crowed sourced advert and having still to go back to an agency for the idea development of the advert.

What do you think about this technique?

Android crowned winner

Figures published by Gartner (tech analysts) reveal very ineresting figures. Although the finnish company Nokia has sold more handsets in the second quarter of 2010 then the same period last year, its share of the market has slipped from 51% to 41%.

But you might say, is this possible giventhe hype around the iPhone? Apple's share of the smartphone market increased only by 1.2% points, up to 14.2% for the quarter, which includes the first few days of iPhone 4 sales in the US. In this regard, Apple has claimed that iPhone 4 has been the most successful launch in its history. Gartner's figures show that 8.7 million iPhones sold for the period, but this includes the older iPhone 3G and 3GS, and it forecasts strong sales throughout the second half of the year.

The winner for of this battle was not an individual headset but the Android operating system, which is being used by manufacturers including Samsung and HTC to run smartphones. These have overtaken the number of phones running on Apple's iOS and have increase their market share from 1.8% last year to 17.2% this year.

This success is being attributed to the branding strategy adopted by Anroid and the non-exclusive strategy that enables the system to be used across many communication service providers. This availability to so many device manufacturers, is making the operating system more attractive to use in the latest generation of mobile phones.

Loaded Magazine Launches Energy Drink

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M&S to launch new breed of Ads

Who hasn't seen the M&S food adverts like those chocolate puddings with melting chocolate flowing from them! They were simply divine....you wanted to go and grab one!

This form of advertising was termed at the time as "food porn" for the way adverts were developed and the way there were presented....however this new form of Porn might come to an end as M&S has decided to focus on price and quality.

The retailer has stopped using its "This is not just..." endline in a new series of ads, in favour of the news strap line "Just because". According to M&S executive director for marketing, Steve Sharp, the ads will now concentrate on "quality, provenance, price, innovation, ethics and offers".

He said: "Virtually everyone loves M&S food – I've certainly never met anyone who doesn't – and everyone has their favourite things. However in these economic circumstances it's not enough to have a nice advert filled with indulgence...people need a bit of a justification to buy. "

The new campaigns which has been built on the success of the 'Quality Worth Every Penny' strap line which was introduced last year to celebrate our 125th Birthday, demonstrates the value and quality proposition that M&S wants to stand for in everything they sell, from clothes to chocolate.

The first of around 20 new M&S food ads, focusing on Easter products with the slogan "Quality worth every penny", is set to break on 26 March on ITV at 7.45pm, while a women swear TV ad launches on 24 March.

EasyJet Advert targets Ryanair

EasyJet and Ryanair once again face each other in an advertising clash. This is not the first time that one of the airline's advert features the other company. This is what EasyJet did in its last campaign as it was promoting the fact that they fly to major airports whereas the others fly to smaller out of town airports!

The outdoor advert featured the tagline 'Who loves flying you to the place you actually booked?', obviously implying that Ryanair flies to airports some distance from the supposed destination city (sometime the airport can be as far outside the city as two hours bus ride). Under the Ryanair section the advert reported that 'Barcelona = Girona, Paris = Beauvais, Milan = Bergamo, Venice = Treviso'. In comparison to this, under EasyJet section, the same advert reported that they fly to 'Barcelona = Barcelona, Paris = Paris, Milan = Milan, Venice = Venice'.

Ryanair filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority claiming that Beauvais, Bergamo and Treviso had been officially designated as airports for their corresponding cities by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The budget carrier said also that the way they advertise the destination is faithful to the destination...in fact they report Girona as 'Girona (Barcelona)', rather than 'Barcelona (Girona)'.

The ASA took note of the complaint and agreed with Ryanairn on the basis that it was true that IATA had designated the airports for Paris, Milan and Venice respectively, and advised easyJet to seek copy advice from CAP for future campaigns.

EasyJet UK general manager Paul Simmons said he was "disappointed" by the ruling. He said: "It is a well-know fact that easyJet flies to major airports whereas Ryanair serves out-of-town airfields which can be a two hour bus ride away from your destination."