The Advent of Pay-to-Play Publicity

Pay-to-play pub­li­city — it had to arrive soon­er or later.

A Swedish com­pany now offers a pay-to-play func­tion­al­ity that allows brands to unlock pay­walled art­icles to increase vis­ib­il­ity for pos­it­ive mentions.

Quite a few Swedish news organ­isa­tions have already joined:

The ser­vice tar­gets PR pro­fes­sion­als, and their pitch is that online PR doesn’t work any­more; it’s a shame that great brand men­tions get locked away behind paywalls.

Here’s how it works in a nut­shell: below is a loc­al news art­icle with a pos­it­ive brand men­tion behind a paywall:

The brand, or any oth­er brand, can unlock this con­tent for a fee.

For com­par­is­on, 10,000 SEK is roughly 1,100 USD.

At these rates, most Swedish com­pan­ies work­ing act­ively with PR would con­sider unlock­ing a pos­it­ive brand men­tion for the allot­ted time. But they won’t be too happy about it — the thrill of pub­li­city is that any­one can read about your brand.

Not just the people you send the art­icle to.

Publicity work now becomes laden with anoth­er task; brands must take full own­er­ship of dis­trib­ut­ing their “super link.”

How do you share this “super link?” Via social media, most likely. And that, as we know, comes with an addi­tion­al fee today.

I can’t help but feel that pay-to-play pub­li­city takes some of the fun out of get­ting tra­di­tion­al pub­li­city. I’m sure that most PR pro­fes­sion­als would agree.

We can say many things about pub­lic rela­tions, but no one can say it’s a high-mar­gin busi­ness. Each addi­tion­al cost must come from the pock­ets of com­mu­nic­at­ors and PR professionals.

Still, we can’t blame the com­pany behind this solution.

If the altern­at­ive has your brand men­tions pay­walled forever, this provides PR pro­fes­sion­als with an extra option. But the “good news” stops there, I’m afraid.

What will hap­pen if pay-to-play pub­li­city becomes the norm?

Here’s what to expect from news publishers:

And here’s what to expect from PR professionals:

Let’s hope that we all can do bet­ter than this.