What a Persuasive-Technology Psychologist Can Tell Us About Paying for News Online It's clear that most newspaper publishers want to change online users' behavior and get them to start paying for news. But how? I reached out to Dr. B.J. Fogg, an expert in "persuasive technology" who heads up Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. If you want to figure out how to persuade your audience to donate money, or pay for online content, Fogg is your go-to guy.
By
Steve Outing
(July 28, 2009) -- What a Persuasive Technology Psychologist Can Tell Us About Paying for News Online
By Steve Outing
It's clear that most newspaper publishers want to change online users' behavior and get them to start paying for news. Some news consumers are worried about the state of the industry and the quality of news it produces, and are willing to pay something for quality news to keep it being produced. That much we can probably agree on.
Where the divergence hits:
1. Do news Web sites force payment (micropayments or subscriptions) to see any of their content? 2. Do news Web sites force payment only on limited, special content and services, leaving the rest free and supported by advertising and other revenue streams? (This is otherwise known as the freemium model.) 3. Do news Web sites give away all or most of their content, but use various technological and persuasive solutions to let readers pay if they want to, but read for free if they don't -- thus not putting the publishers in danger of losing advertiser revenue due to lower Web traffic, and continuing to permit unfettered sharing and redistribution of links and excerpts to grow traffic even more?
Industry stalwarts like Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group and chairman of the Associated Press, seem with recent public statements and saber-rattling to favor option No. 1, or No. 2 but with a twist: the remaining free content is protected from all but "appropriate and lawful use" (as defined by the media barons and their lawyers) by other Web sites, aggregators and search engines.
All of us in the news industry have our opinions; mine is that options No. 2 and 3 are the only workable ones, and that efforts to restrict the flow of news content around the Web will backfire on the newspaper industry, putting it at even greater risk than it already is.
But what about the users? Often, it seems like the CEOs of newspaper companies are talking only among themselves, and not thinking about what the online news consumer wants -- or is willing to accept.
So I reached out to an expert in "persuasive technology," Dr. B.J. Fogg, who heads up Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab and is a psychologist who investigates how technology persuades people. (The term that Fogg came up with in the mid 1990s to describe this field of study is " captology. ") He also "helps good organizations use tech and new media to influence people" as a consultant working outside the university. If you want to figure out how to persuade your audience to donate money, or pay for online content, Fogg is a go-to guy.
Forced behavior: How will that work out?
Let's start the questioning of Dr. Fogg with the position currently being espoused by a growing number of seasoned newspaper execs who are fed up with (and panicking about) badly declining revenues due to structural changes in the media industry and the economic downturn. If classified revenue doesn't rise back up for newspapers, which is likely, and the percentage of ad dollars being spent on the Web and mobile continues to increase, then online news readers will have to pay for the content they've been getting free for the last decade and a half in order to prop up newspaper operations. Or so this "old-school" argument goes.
How will that work out if news publishers start demanding money on the Web to access their news?
"I am not optimistic that that approach will work," says Fogg, "at least not in the short term."
His reasoning will sound similar to the media-industry critics of mandatory paid content schemes: Online users are used to getting news on the Web for free and have a history of a decade and a half of that; it will be difficult to get them to change, Fogg says. Even if the newspaper industry were to decide to put most or all of their content behind a pay wall (we'll assume that publishers figure out how to do that without colluding and calling the attention of antitrust authorities), there will be some who do not go along. If 50% of newspapers put up Web subscription walls, the other 50% would become very popular, he adds. Even if 90% of newspaper publishers marched in lock-step to erect subscription or pay walls, the 10% who didn't would become extremely popular, along with non-newspaper online news providers who will take advantage of the opportunity handed to them by the newspaper industry.
The Web, the professor says, simply offers too many free alternatives to any news site that decides to put up financial barriers to entry. Of course, the argument from newspaper leaders is that "our content is superior; what others are doing isn't anywhere near the quality that our large newsrooms can produce." But the problem with that, says Fogg, is that the majority of online users will accept a lower-quality alternative if it's free. (And, many newspapers have done themselves no favors by cutting editorial staff so drastically in the last couple years, so their product is no longer as high in quality -- and readers recognize that.)
Then there's the age factor. Young people are far less likely to pay for online content than the older generation. Ergo, a paid-wall online news strategy will succeed only in getting an older audience to pay online, or give up formerly free Web news and go back to paying for the print edition. Clearly, this is no strategy for the future; it just gets older news readers to pay up longer -- until they die off and are replaced by the next generation of news consumers who think differently and have adapted to using other free news sources online.
The psychology of ‘freemium’
Fogg views content that people are passionate about as potentially getting enough people to pay to support and make a profit for a niche online business. A special niche about a hobby that an online user is passionate about -- say, fishing, or scrapbooking -- could well support the production of specialty content and services. But an investigative reporting package about the state of the Los Angeles school system? It's highly unlikely that news publishers can get enough user money online (either forced or voluntary) to pay the costs of producing a project like that, let alone making a profit, he says.
This seems obvious, and it's also what many new-media pundits have been saying for a long time: General news presented on the Web isn't likely to be supported by user payments, but news publishers can create extra-special niche content and services that will get enthusiasts to pull out their credit cards.
What if we don't MAKE users pay?
In the tech sphere, where saving newspapers isn't of paramount concern, there is a growing amount of activity in developing solutions for getting online users to voluntarily pay for Web content that they like. (Ditto for mobile content, but that is trailing development of systems for Web sites and blogs.) Many bloggers make nothing; others make modest livings; the rare elite blogs do well financially. So a number of entrepreneurs are tackling the problem of how to get, say, a popular blog's tens or hundreds of thousands of readers to start donating money in amounts great enough to let the blogger earn a decent living.
I've been covering these voluntary payment schemes quite a bit lately in this column and on my personal blog. And the reaction I get from most publishers and journalists is deep skepticism that any voluntary scheme can bring in enough money to be a significant revenue stream for media Web sites.
But Fogg's research could indicate that those publishers should be more open-minded, and that experimentation and testing variations could turn donation schemes into significant revenue sources. (No one is seriously talking about donation solutions alone saving the newspaper industry; rather, the serious talk should be about optimizing each of many revenue solutions to support news.)
One of Fogg's principal tenets is "simplicity." As he explains on his Web site, "I learned that if a target behavior is not simple enough, many people won't do it. More and more, we're becoming a 'one-click' culture; we want to get things done in one step. We humans often give up on complicated tasks. So in today's world, I believe simplicity is the most important quality in designing successful products and services."
I asked for Fogg's assessment of several voluntary Web-site donation solutions currently under development, and whether or not he thinks they have a chance of pulling in significant money for publishers.
Payyattention: 1 click to donate 10 cents
Payyattention provides Web publishers with a donate box that is automatically appended to a site or blog's articles. It invites non-registered online users to learn about and sign up for "reader-supported media." The idea is that you've just finished reading an article or blog post and think it's great; the Payyattention box is there to invite you to support the author. Once you initially sign up for a Payyattention account and put in some money via Paypal, then Payyattention follows you around the Web. When you are at another participating site, the Payyattention donate box now looks different and will allow you with one click to donate 10 cents (or whatever default value the site publisher has set), which is subtracted from your Payyattention account balance. (An additional click or two will allow you to donate a different amount, as well as see your donation patterns, how much the article has collected in donations from others, etc.)
Fogg describes the concept as Digg “meets the donation jar." In other words, just like with Digg, with Payyattention you publicly identify and support stories you like a lot, but the support is also in the form of a small amount of money.
Assessment: Fogg likes the basic psychology behind the concept and the overall big idea. But he thinks it's not quite right. In terms of his emphasis on simplicity -- especially important for donations -- Payyattention is on the right track. Click once to reward a writer or blogger with a small cash token of appreciation.
But the big problem is in getting online readers over the first big hurdle: creating a Payyattention account initially and putting in money. That's very hard, Fogg says, and is this solution's biggest hurdle to success. Getting people to create an account when they want to buy something at a shopping Web site is generally not a problem; but it's very difficult when dealing with voluntary donations.
There's also the issue with Payyattention of where you place the donation box. Much online reading research shows that few users get to the end of articles if they're long. Fogg thinks that having it at the end of an article may not be the ideal place; maybe it's also at the beginning, or after the first few paragraphs.
This gets to another of Fogg's chief tenets: Test everything. Don't just guess, but run some tests with a random set of online users and see what positioning brings in the most money. Test out the donation box with the author's photo and a short personal request from the author to donate. Test, test, test.
BeneVote: no cash outlay involved
BeneVote by Twixa is similar to Payyattention in that it adds a box at the end of a Web site or blog article that enables the reader to support the author or blogger. The reader is cued that voting either "like" or "dislike" on the BeneVote box will support the site. A reader clicks "like," for example, and a small pop-up box appears saying something like, "Thanks for your vote, which supports this site!" and a summary of the voting so far (e.g., "10 of 11 approval").
The BeneVote pop-out box also includes a contextul or user-targeted ad, which is how the service earns money to distribute to site and blog publishers without the reader paying anything. And that's a problem, says Fogg, because by using the service and clicking to vote, the article reader is "punished" by seeing an ad. He's not likely to keep voting if the "reward" for voting is perceived as an annoyance.
Fogg thinks the BeneVote developers need to incorporate reinforcement psychology into their scheme. "We are wired to do stuff that rewards us, not that annoys us," he says. Clicking to vote needs to set off a positive feeling in the user's brain. A "thank you" plus an ad probably isn't enough; but perhaps there's something else that voting could trigger that would make the user feel good. (Perhaps a thank you from the author with his/her photo, or a discount coupon, or ...) Once again, Fogg suggests, test and test some more.
He thinks that Payyattention, even though it costs the reader money to support an article or writer and BeneVote does not, hits the psychology bell more clearly than BeneVote. "If I click and give the writer 5 cents, a chemical goes off in my brain that makes me feel good," he says. That's what you want to achieve for your user.
Kachingle: Simplicity + social pressure
Kachingle attempts to turn lots of people into "Kachinglers" who financially support a wide variety of Web sites and blogs they like most with as simple a system as can be designed. In fact, the development of the service is being guided by the principles of psychology. The company's head of product management/UI has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology.
Kachingle wants online users to create an account and agree to pay $5 a month (or optionally choose another amount) to support Web sites and blogs that they like best. Like Payyattention, it faces the difficult hurdle of getting people to sign up for a Kachingle account initially. After that, financially supporting favorite sites and blogs is simple: Kachinglers click a "medallion" on participating sites a single time to indicate that they support it; then the clicked sites from then on get a regular chunk of the Kachingler's monthly $5 split by number of visits to favorite sites.
Founder and president Cynthia Typaldos says that Kachingle's development is being guided by both simplicity (Fogg would approve) and social pressure and social influence by use of social networks. E.g., when a Kachingler clicks to support a newly discovered favorite blog, that news might automatically be shared with the Kachingler's Facebook friends and Twitter followers. That, of course, exposes more people to the favorited site, and to the idea of becoming a Kachingler and supporting free online content.
Fogg says that he's dubious that anyone can come up with a new psychological model that hasn't been identified already, and persuasive psychology techniques generally have to match what's worked in the physical world. Kachingle's model, in his view, tries to get the online user to "do the right thing" by financially supporting free online news and content, then sharing that information with friends in hopes of influencing their behavior. He likens it to the psychology at a charity auction, where people are influenced to bid when seeing their friends and peers bidding. But Fogg expects that if 100 people on your social networks see that you have supported a Web site via Kachingle, only one or two of them might be inspired to sign up themselves. So he's not sure how much money the service can bring in.
Typaldos also points to another psychological aspect of Kachingle: The system tracks your favorite sites and blogs and usage of them, then builds a profile (visible to others, if desired) that offers a sense of "who you really are" by the sites, blogs and causes that you've chosen to support. You can discover "who you are" by viewing your support profile, and you can let others also see who you are by making your Web-site support behavior public.
Contenture, Inamoon: slight variation
The donation-network services Contenture and Inamoon are a variation of Kachingle's model. Paying members support the sites they visit (that are part of the respective networks), but Contenture and Inamoon both promote the idea that their members get special content or privileges beyond a Web site's free content when they visit a partner site; non-members would have to pay. For example, a network member paying $6 a month to Contenture might visit a partner Web site and see an ad-free version of the site, where non-members would see ads; or get access to a special content area or archives.
Fogg thinks that this offer of special content for network members won't motivate many users because of the wealth of great free content on the Web, and both services face the same large hurdle of getting enough people to sign up for paid monthly memberships. Also, the idea is complicated to get across.
Money from paid content: You'll need a huge audience
Fogg thinks that for all the voluntary online-donation schemes described above -- and more so for the mandatory payment schemes espoused by some traditional-minded news publishers -- the conversion rate will be tiny. To make a significant amount of money by getting online users to pay for content (either forced or voluntary), the Web site or network will need a very large audience. A newspaper Web site with 300,000 monthly users, for example, will not be big enough to convince enough people to pay or donate to build a significant revenue stream.
And for news online, Fogg is pessimistic about overall schemes to get many user to make donations, because there's no real-world success story to point to the possibility of success. The closest mass volunteer effort that succeeded on a large scale was the domestic volunteer war effort during World War II.
So if you buy his line of reasoning, it will take getting paid-content or voluntary-donation solutions in front of huge audiences to amount to significant amounts of money. For hard news and watchdog/investigative journalism, Fogg comes to a conclusion that's close to my own: It will need to be supported more, at least in the near term, by wealthy people and foundations. On the Web, with its abundance of free goodness, paid non-niche content just won't do it because of the impediments of human psychology and the power of "free."
Final words from the guru
Here's one last psychological tidbit from Fogg. Getting online users to pay for content online (whether by mandatory payment or voluntary donation) works best when you hit the user at a time when he or she already is in payment mode, which of course is no easy task when the user is reading news for free online.
Amazon.com can succeed in getting people to buy additional related products when they're about to buy something; a consumer ordering a Nikon camera is presented with other photography goodies during the ordering process and increases the amount spent. Google Adwords ads work so well because the user is in search mode; a contextually matched text ad shown with search results can result in more clicks and purchases because the user already is in search-and-acquire mode.
An example of hitting consumers at the right time to pay for news (this would be limited to nonprofit news providers) would be if a news organization like MinnPost.com, a nonprofit news entity that serves the state of Minnesota, was able to get on a list of optional charities that taxpayers can give to when they're filling out their state tax forms. As Fogg points out, they're already in the mode to write a check (or know that they're getting a refund), so that's an ideal time to hit them up for a small extra donation to MinnPost and support public-interest journalism.
As media people design products or services, Fogg advises looking for a real-world example that demonstrably works in getting people to do what you want (paying for content, making a donation, etc.) Mirror or adapt the psychology that makes real-world behavior change happen and apply it online.
While that may sound hard, Fogg points out that it's really easy for online publishers to test out ideas, and test multiple variations to find out what works best. Simple online testing and surveys using random participants are easy to do and relatively inexpensive.
"When it comes to designing products or services, I think it's foolish to guess on any aspect of design,” says Fogg. “Instead, use testing and measurement as a guide. I believe the future of persuasive technology (and most any consumer experience) is all about measurement."
So the psychology professor's lesson is a simple one: Don't presume the behavior of today's online audience ("If we make them pay for news, online users will learn that it's valuable and pay us!"), but test it out.
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What a Persuasive-Technology Psychologist Can Tell Us About Paying for News Online
