Rupert Murdoch, the global media empire magnate, is going to abolish subscription fees at The Wall Street Journal’s Web site. And why? As the headline of the article already shows, to make 10-15 millions instead of one and get more revenues from advertisement from all over the world.

Rupert Murdoch announced this plan in The Australian. According to the amount of subscriptions, The Wall Street Journal counts 1 million subscribers. How much profitable is it to make the Web site free, and lose 1 million subscribers? As Rupert Murdoch announced in different news agencies: “We are studying it and we expect to make it free.”

In a highly competitive media market it is the result of hard work to obtain million subscribers. There are thousands of online newspapers and media products that need an income from their subscribers. The income of The Wall Street Journal is about $50 million a year, though according to a Dow Jones it is nearly $70 million.

As Rupert Murdoch says, the majority of The Journal sites will be free. But the final decision is not made yet.

What are the bases of increased interest in online advertisement? What makes media owners rely on advertisement incomes rather than getting more and more subscribers?

UK Internet Advertising Statistics 2007 report is a kind of supporting evidence to this fact. The result shows the follows:

Summary of UK Online advertising research
These are the headlines from the IAB Research which showed a 41% surge in online media investment.

• £2.016 billion spent on online advertising in UK, 2006
• 11.4% online share of all advertising revenues (up from 7.8% in 2005)
• Online advertising greater than national newspapers (10.9% share)
• Internet spend just over half the size of the TV advertising market, which experienced a fall of 4.7% to £3.9 billion.
• UK nearly double average global share - the Global average is currently 5.8% according to ZenithOptimedia
  

Online advertising formats
Formats or tactics used showed a continued dominance of paid for search

• £1.2 billion (57.8 % share) on Paid for search
• £453.7 million on display advertising (including banners, skyscrapers and online sponsorships)
• £379 million (18.8% share)
  

According to UK Internet Advertising Statistics 2007 results say that:” direct mail and at current rates of increase will overtake TV advertising by 2010!”

Clickety Clack: Online Ad Blog, that’s mission is to “Share My Experiences on online advertising” provides us with more categorized results, and statistic assumptions on nowadays media market and the share of online ads in it.

One day it is expected to have media in different forms, different expectations, and different capabilities promising huge revenues on the bases of free access of information.

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