Identifying it as a key differentiator in the battle for readers and advertisers, The Globe and Mail is planning a comprehensive overhaul of its Report on Business (ROB) section both in print and online.
The revamp comes with a new Apple Watch app and a new iOS app that will receive three daily content updates.
The national daily is also promising “enhanced” advertising opportunities such as native advertising and contextual targeting that enables advertisers to appear adjacent to content that matters to their brands. The Bank of Montreal, BMW and Air Canada are on-board as launch sponsors for the new app.
Publisher and CEO Phillip Crawley said the Globe’s business content accounts for up to 75% of the national daily’s conversions to its paid digital subscription service, Globe Unlimited.
“[Readers] hit the paywall, they decide they really need the content for their personal purposes or to help them with their business life,” said Crawley. “We’ve seen that pattern happening repeatedly. The obvious decision for us is ‘Let’s invest more in the creation of that content.’
While rival papers such as La Presse and the Toronto Star have opted to make their content available for free in the hope of monetizing audiences through advertising, Crawley said the Globe has been “very happy” with the performance of Globe Unlimited since its 2012 debut.
The service currently has 70,000 paid digital-only subscribers, as well as an additional 80,000 print subscribers who receive free access to the service. Those numbers represent a 13% year-over-year increase, said Crawley.
Crawley said newspaper pay-walls have largely failed in North America because of a lack of compelling – and exclusive – content. “We believe that if you have high quality content people will pay, and the evidence over the last two-and-a-half years suggests that remains true,” he said.
The Globe has added 34 writers, editors and graphics staff to the ROB section as part of the revamp, and will add more charts, graphs and infographics.“We’re not doing away with pictures, but there is a much stronger focus on good graphics and charts,” said Crawley.
The ROB section was most recently overhauled as part of a sweeping redesign of the Globe in 2010, but this update is largely a digital-led initiative, further underscoring its importance to the future of newspapers.
“The creation of content that is specifically earmarked to be behind the paywall has changed the way we approach stories and decide which are going to be free and which can only be read by subscribers,” said Crawley.
The revamp is being supported by a $3 million marketing campaign from Naked Creative based on the theme “Powering Canada’s business.” The campaign, which also includes media from Gaggi Media and PR from Environics, utilizes print, radio, digital and out-of-home.
