NBR ONLINE eliminates all ads bar its ‘big banner’

NBR ONLINE is eliminating all advertising spots on its home page, bar the ‘big banner’ that runs across the top of the site, from August 31.

“In this day and age you simply can’t expect to fund a good-quality news service from advertising alone,” publisher Todd Scott explains.

“Thus our focus is to deliver the very best experience for our member subscribers and ask them to help crowd-fund to greatness, without the need to clutter a website with annoying pop-up ads, or worse, ads that appear smack bang in the middle of an article.”

If online subscriptions can be thought of as crowdfunding, then readers’ equity and return is access to timely, relevant, useful and insightful business news, Mr Scott says.

More subs, fewer ads
The more member subscribers NBR ONLINE has, the fewer ads it needs to run, he adds.

“We need the business community’s support to take business news reporting to another level. We are moving away from such a heavy reliance on advertisers and asking businesspeople to help fund the best-resourced and business focused newsroom in the country through subscriptions.”

A focus on reader subscriptions as the main source of revenue incentivises journalists to write harder stories, Mr Scott says.

NBR ONLINE offers individual subscriptions plus IP or organisation-wide subs at SME and corporate rates.

New features, new staff
The site’s radical move on advertising comes on the heels of several major initiatives.

NBR ONLINE recently made its Smartphone-only subscription free until August 31 – and close to 7000 have so far taken advantage of the offer.

The New Year saw the introduction of NBR Radio, providing free access to paywall stories. The new service is complemented by the customisable MyNBR Radio, a world-first on-demand, streaming audio service featuring instant access to audio versions of articles, interviews and panel discussions.

NBR Radio and MyNBR Radio are being enhanced all the time, including upgrades over the past week for faster access from mobile phones and support for pause, fast-forward and rewind through the new “phat scrubber.”

Other recent enhancements include the print edition going live on the website the same time as newsstands for print subscribers; a new Print Archive email alerting NBR ONLINE subscribers when print articles become available; and new key-word alerts for tracking specific people, companies or topics.

The new features follow a major makeover of the whole site in October, which introduced a new responsive design for better tablet and mobile viewing, and a spate of new hires including Tim Hunter and Jenny Ruth.