MailOnline will begin paywalling portions of its content

MailOnline will begin charging for access to portions of its content in January as it attempts to reduce its reliance on advertising revenue. While most articles will remain free to read, 10 to 15 each day will be available only to paying readers via a “freemium” subscription model, The Telegraph reports.

The new paid offering will operate independently from The Daily Mail’s existing subscription product, Mail+, which was launched in 2019. Mail+ centers around digital replicas of its print issues and is managed by print-centric staffers, but the new offering will be spearheaded by digital-first teams at MailOnline.

In terms of the types of content that are likely to be paywalled, internal conversations have centered around coverage of the British royal family and high-profile celebrity stories, sources at MailOnline told Toolkits.

The model being explored is said to be based on ­the approach taken by German publisher Bild, and MailOnline executives reportedly traveled to Germany to discuss the plans. MailOnline and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere hinted at the moves last month, stating “I think we can carry on being mostly advertising, but we can also build a premium subscription product as well.”

Why now? MailOnline is facing the same challenges as the majority of digital news publishers: Content distribution and traffic generation are proving more difficult as large platforms quickly deprioritize publisher content, and competition for audience attention is intensifying as overall interest in news content dwindles. Demand for news publishers’ ad offerings also remains weak as advertisers are increasingly wary of appearing next to controversial or polarizing content, and marketer attention continues to shift toward larger platforms such as Google, Amazon, and Meta instead.

MailOnline has been reluctant to charge for access to its content to date, having focused its efforts instead on reaching the largest audience possible under former editor Martin Clarke. But as the digital publishing landscape continues to shift and evolve it’s becoming increasingly clear that publishers with strong subscription and reader-revenue bases are faring better in the modern media environment than those without, and that media businesses predicated on scaled audiences and advertiser support will increasingly need to adapt and evolve to survive.