Time behind paywall

851 days

(1st August 2013 to 30th November 2015)

the sun paywall announcement

Cost of monthly Sun+ subscription

£7.99

Daily unique pageviews

(figures from ABC newspaper circulation)

unique pageviews, the sun, mail online, the guardian

Sun+ subscribers

December 2013 = 117,000

December 2014 = 225,000

Estimated Sun+ subscribers needed to break even

250,000 to 300,000

Percentage of all online publishers’ content referrals from social media

Q4 2013 = 22.71%

Q4 2014 = 31.24%

(Shareaholic)

Print advertising decline

In October 2015, The Guardian reported that print advertising in the sector had been down by as much as 30% in the preceding six months.

Newspaper annual digital revenue

N.B. an estimated 40% of Guardian digital revenue is from advertising. The Sun revenue is not split out, so I have multiplied subscribers by £7.99 monthly subscription cost and scaled up to annual revenues (this is obviously a significant overestimate, given the number of cheaper subscriptions taken out via The Sun’s partnership with O2).

Also note that Guardian financial year end is in March, Mail Online in September. Mail Online figure for 2014/2015 is an estimate.

digital revenue, the sun, mail online, the guardian

Cost of The Sun’s Premier League highlights deal

£30m over three years.

People watching Vine videos online every month

>100m (August 2014)

Daily Vine video loops

>1.5bn (January 2015, Jason Toff, Vine)

With Vine a popular method of watching sports highlights, including near real-time goal replays, Twitter has likely eaten into the value of the Sun+ highlights package.

The Sun ‘Dream Team’ (fantasy football) subscribers

1.25m

Dream Team reach on socialmedia

276m. Dream Team has been a notable success for The Sun and will likely continue to grow. The Guardian has shown how subscription services (e.g. Guardian SoulMates) can prosper within a free model.

Ad blocker users in the UK

12m (PageFair). This is likely to increase now that iOS is allowing ad blocking technology and sounds a note of caution for online publications that are not diversifying with native ads and subscription products.

Percentage of digital display ad market taken by Google and Facebook

Research by eMarketer in December 2014 estimated that in 2015 Google and Facebook will take 50.8% of the total UK digital advertising revenue (>£1bn).

This is another stat that shows publishers need to be wary of relying solely on advertising revenue, when advertisers are so heavily invested in the major tech platforms.

2015 has seen online newspapers partnering with social platforms (often in a revenue sharing model) and further developing their native advertising products.

Time will tell how The Sun will fare now social media is likely to drive greatly increased pageviews.