Study: Fewer Americans Paying For News On-Line

68% of Americans use online news sites on a weekly basis, with 37% calling online their main source of news, but only 13% of consumers say they are currently paying for online editorial content, according to a new research report on news consumption from the Danish research group AudienceProject. That compares to 38% of news consumers in Norway and 20% in Sweden who currently pay for online subscriptions.

Moreover, according to Forbes,the percentage of Americans paying for online news has fallen by 2% since 2017, with an additional 4% of current subscribers considering ending their current subscriptions. The only silver lining from a revenue perspective is that Americans are the now less likely to pay extra to get rid of ads on news sites, with only 17% responding affirmatively in 2019, down from 25% in 2017.

According to the report, Americans who pay for content prefer concise news items (63%) compared to e-papers and e-zines (50%) with 54% signing up for international news, 52% for domestic news, and 37% for financial news. 44% of US survey respondents say they pay for long-read features, tops among the seven countries surveyed. Only 16% of Finns who subscribe to news, for example, say they pay for long-form content.

Americans’ reluctance to pay for online news content is all the more stark considering that online news far outpaces other media as a regular source of information. In a question that allowed respondents multiple selections, 68% said they considered online sites a weekly source of news, compared to 63% for television, 60% for social, 41% for radio and just 29% for printed newspapers and magazines. 37% consider online to be their main source of news, compared to 19% for television.

According to AudienceProject, the findings are based on an international online survey of 14,000 respondents conducted in Q4 of 2019.