Google is developing new tools designed to boost subscriptions for news publishers, as Bloomberg reports.
As a part of its more extensive effort to keep buyers and content-makers coming back to the web, Google is exploring publishers’ tools around online payments and targeting potential subscribers which are additionally the lifeline of its ad business.
Overall, it’s being reported that the company has a three-tier plan to boost paid subscriptions for news publishers.
The first is to revamp an existing feature called “first click free,” which enables searchers to get to content that would usually reside behind a paywall. Just the first click is free and further click-throughs require a subscription.
Another part of the plan includes exploring publishers’ tools around online payments and to help publishers with targeting potential subscribers, which we talked about earlier.
Talking to Bloomberg, Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president for news, said that, “It’s clear from news publishers that they can’t live on advertising alone,” he said. “But it’s also clear that we’re seeing a shift in a market.”
Google’s version, called Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP, enables news websites to load more quickly inside of search. With the new tools, Google is looking at ways to let publishers identify who may subscribe, determine how much readers would pay and speed up the process.
Google will be initially testing these tools with the New York Times and the Financial Times and is additionally in talk with dozens of other outlets as media companies move toward online subscription models.
