Emarketer has a very interesting interview with the publisher of Economist.com. Highlights:

• The current revenue split is 60% advertising, 40% subscription and individual article purchases. "I think it's hard to imagine that subscriptions become probably more than 50% of revenues, partly because I think advertising's still going to continue to grow. I think it's not that subs is less important; I think you're seeing the overall growth in advertising being bigger or as big. "
• The Economist has separate print and online sales forces. Not only does it avoid sales people giving away online to sell print, but "It's also that a lot of what we do is complicated. It's variable. If you think of selling print, for example, it's, "Do you want a color page or a black-and-white page?" Selling dot-com is very much about understanding the customers, understanding the technology. I think you need two sets of people doing those separate jobs. "
• There's a lot of free content on the home page, but for you have to be a subscriber read most of it. It's an important tool for selling subscriptions.
• They have 174,000 subscribers, but the bulk of them are print subscribers who have activated their free online subs. That puts online subscription revenue at under $6 million (174,000/2*$70/year).
• The average online reader is 10 years younger than the average print reader. If you excluded those free print subs, I suspect they would be even younger.

What comes across is a refreshing lack of hubris. The Economist, as one of the strongest brands in business and news, is as unique a case as the Wall Street Journal. But they are clearly focused on learning from their mistakes and building their business incrementally, instead of thrashing around with strategic shifts.

Posted by bp at April 12, 2003 12:36 PM
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