Sixteen of the 50 biggest news websites in the UK are now using a “consent or pay” model to allow users to pay to reject personalised advertising or even avoid ads altogether.
UK publishers began to implement the model last year as the Information Commissioner’s Office cracked down on the requirement for the biggest sites to display a “reject all cookies” button as prominently as the option to “accept all”.
More publishers have begun to implement consent or pay this year after the ICO clarified that the model was acceptable as long as users are given a “realistic choice”, including by not putting the price too high.
The ICO rules relate to the ability for users to opt out of tracking cookies used to show personalised advertising, which have a higher value to advertisers.
But some publishers have chosen instead to offer users the choice between accepting cookies and paying to see no adverts at all, making it more attractive to users fed up with cluttered browsing experiences.
Kim Skovgaards, adtech specialist at Usercentrics which implements different consent solutions on “hundreds of thousands” of websites including motorsport news site The Race, told Press Gazette the UK’s regulatory guidance is “currently among the most mature, setting out specific expectations for how these models should be implemented in a way that ensures user choice is freely given and not unduly influenced.
“This regulatory clarity is encouraging more UK publishers to explore consent or pay as a viable way to reconcile advertising-driven revenue models with growing privacy expectations,” he said.
“As adoption increases, we expect to see more refinement in how these models are presented to users, with a stronger emphasis on transparency, meaningful alternatives, and a balanced user experience.”
When users are equally offered the chance to “accept all” or “reject all” cookies, consent rates are typically somewhere around 70-80%, according to both Skovgaards and Contentpass founder Dirk Freytag.
Once a consent or pay model is introduced, almost 100% choose to accept cookies with a small number choosing to pay instead, they each told Press Gazette.
This means publishers are more likely to benefit from a better price for their advertising than if people had chosen to reject personalised advertising, and the small number who choose to pay make up for the advertising that would be lost if they had otherwise rejected.
Skovgaards said: “In a typical ‘accept or reject all’ setup without a monetisation layer, rejection rates tend to be higher, particularly in markets like Germany or France where data privacy awareness is strong and users are more likely to opt out when given a clear choice.
“With standard banners designed transparently and with balanced options, consent rates typically range between 70% to 80% across our network.
“When a ‘consent or pay’ model is introduced, however, we often see consent rates increase significantly in some cases rising above 95%, as only a small fraction of users opt to pay for a tracking-free experience. This set-up shifts the user decision into more of a value exchange framework, where users understand they are either consenting to data use or paying for an alternative.
“That said, while consent rates go up, publishers should monitor potential trade-offs, such as increased bounce rates from users who choose neither to consent nor to pay especially if the model feels too restrictive or lacks clarity.”
Who is charging for users to reject cookies under consent or pay?
The Guardian’s “Ad-Lite” model, giving readers the option to pay £5 to opt out of tracking for personalised advertising, is the most expensive of the examples analysed by Press Gazette.
Its sell to readers states: “Personalised advertising – it’s your choice. Independent, quality original journalism needs your support.”
The Sun and GB News are each charging £4.99. The Sun tells readers that the use of cookies “supports our journalism” and explains: “In response to recent enforcement action by the UK Information Commissioner against publishers, we have been forced to introduce new technology to ask our subscribers to consent to the advertising cookies that support our journalism, or pay a monthly fee that means we don’t need to use them.”
GB News has taken a similar approach, explaining: “If you choose to opt out of advertising cookies you will be asked to pay a small monthly fee to address the shortfall in revenue we need to produce independent quality journalism.”
The next most expensive is The Independent, which offers an ad-free version of its website for £4 – going beyond only letting people turn off tracking to instead improve the overall experience.
Some of the publishers who are implementing consent or pay have a paywall on their website, but this cannot be the same as the option to avoid cookies as the ICO said there must be an “equivalent core service” across all options offered to users.
For example the sign-up button for The Independent’s “Independent Ad Free” offering is presented next to the newsbrand’s “Independent Premium” option which gives access to paywalled articles and other perks and costs £1 for six months and then £99 per year.
Reach, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher, has implemented consent or pay in two stages.
Last summer, the Mirror and Express each launched a “Privacy Plus” offering without tracking or personalised advertising at £1.99 per month each.
Since then several of Reach’s other biggest websites have implemented the model at the higher price of £2.99 per month but with an ad-free experience: the Daily Star, Manchester Evening News, Daily Record and Liverpool Echo.
Press Gazette understands a consolidation of the two offerings is on the cards as Reach also begins to put “serious focus” on subscriptions for the first time under new chief executive Piers North.
Terry Hornsby, chief product and technology officer at Reach, said: “While we haven’t seen a really material impact from consent or pay, it’s a good option to be able to offer users who do want that ad-free experience.
“This is definitely something we’re considering as part of a wider offering, as we go further on our digital subscriptions journey.”
The second and third biggest regional publishers in the UK (behind Reach) are also trying out the £2.99 price point, although without personalised advertising rather than without any ads. Some sites from National World (including The Scotsman) and Newsquest (such as Herald Scotland) are using similar messaging.
The Times did experiment with a consent or pay model but decided it was not worth it, although News UK stablemate The Sun has continued with it.
Last year The Times had put the highest price on users opting out of sharing their data, at £6.99 per month. However it has since returned to a free “accept or reject all” model, comparable to similar subscription-based titles like The Telegraph, The Economist and the Financial Times which also do not have consent or pay.
Bauer Media brands such as Empire and Grazia have “pay to reject” on their consent banners but at the time of writing the sign-up was broken and the websites were letting Press Gazette reject cookies without paying instead.
However Bauer’s sister audio brand Rayo, which contains brands including Absolute Radio and Magic FM, is offering an ad-free experience across the website and on live radio streams for £3.99 per month.
Some UK publishers – The Standard and the Ladbible portfolio of sites – are now taking part in a network called Contentpass, which means when people pay £3.49 (or €3.99) per month they get access to almost 600 participating sites “without banner ads, personalised tracking and video ads”.
Consent or pay ‘significantly rising’ all over Europe
Contentpass founder Dirk Freytag told Press Gazette said the company shifted towards consent or pay – known in other countries including Germany as “pay or OK” – after GDPR data protection rules were introduced in 2018.
He said demand for this model has been “significantly rising all over Europe” for about three-and-a-half years. Domains in 23 countries are using the Contentpass solution along with consumers from about 96 countries.
Freytag said their goal was to “help publishers to make more money and more revenue, but as well to fulfil the legal demands that are happening through the privacy regulations”.
He suggested that the consumers who are most likely to pay appear to be those on IT sites who are more interested in the tech than the average person, as well as brands with consumers with higher incomes.
According to Freytag, consumers who give consent for cookies are worth “nearly double that value in ad revenue, because whenever you can track, whenever you know that the audience is right, as an advertiser you’re willing to pay significantly more. So our rough figure is that it’s about 50% that you lose when you have consumers who do not give consent.”
He added: “When a publisher is moving to a solution that’s a pay or OK model, regardless of whether it’s the Contentpass solution or someone else, at the end you monetise 100% of your inventory because consumers who are not willing to give consent and who do not want to see ads pay you in money for that.”
Contentpass, he said, asks publishers how much they would normally be earning from advertising for consumers on their site and reimburses them accordingly from users who pay. “We buy ad placements at market rates, and with that, we can do the share model,” he said.
Asked about the risk of news websites losing traffic under this model, as users choose to neither consent to cookies or pay, Freytag said: “We do not see consumers who leave when you activate that model. So you really don’t see any difference in traffic.”
He said that in January 2024, consent or pay was implemented on around 100 websites in Spain on one day as new requirements were introduced. He said this did have an impact on consumer behaviour “but only for four weeks” before users returned to normal.
The reason Contentpass chose to make its solution advertising free, not just tracking free as legally required, was because users are sceptical that tracking takes place even when they are told it doesn’t, Freytag said, noting the way people can feel like adverts follow them around the web. He added: “Consumer perception is more positive towards that model.”
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