The millions tumble on ZO-Online
The Zürcher Oberland Medien website has continued to expand its regional news portal in recent months.
In June, the Internet platform ZO-Online has already registered three million page impressions per month - a figure that until recently seemed unattainable with a purely regional online portal, the publishing house writes in a press release on Wednesday. Now the official figures for the month of August show that ZO-Online has already passed another million mark: 4,391,085 pages were accessed. In the same period, the research company Wemf registered over 400,000 visits.
Consistently regional
Zürcher Oberland Medien is one of the first publishing houses to adopt a consistent regional strategy on the Internet. Instead of emulating the news portals of the major daily newspapers, ZO-Online reports on political and social events in the region on a daily basis. The photo series of regional events are particularly popular. Instead of cüpli scenes in Zurich's Kaufleuten, they show impressions of the rural cattle show - even before the last cows are back in the barn. The editorial team sees this immediacy and closeness to the people of the region as the core of a successful online strategy.
Future financing via "paywall"
As the number of visitors increases, so do the demands and therefore the expenses for ZO-Online. The great success is already reflected in rising advertising revenues. However, this is not enough to cover the editorial costs. One way to achieve a profitable operation is to introduce a "paywall", a charge for certain regional content. The management and the Board of Directors will decide in the coming months in what form such a "paywall" will be introduced.
