On Friday (12 February), it was announced that The Independent and The Independent on Sunday would be ceasing print production and becoming a digital-only publication, with the final print editions being published at the end of March. The all-digital move is to secure the future of The Independent brand, with the website already profitable in its own right, receiving 4.5 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore and the print editions struggling with financial losses. With a print circulation of just 56,000, and a reported online readership 85-times greater, doesn't it make sense to cut your losses and go where all your readers apparently are?

Staunch supporters of the print industry will argue that there is a still a cachet with reading a physical newspaper that you just can’t experience when consuming a news article online. Also, that there is no brand left to protect if it no longer exists in the format in which it earned its name and reputation. But is The Independent simply acting on a long-known, yet muted, realisation within the industry that there is just no money in print and that successful monetisation in the publishing industry can only happen online? Can a publisher with its roots in traditional print build a sustainable pure play digital offering?

According to figures published by the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), all UK newspapers are seeing dwindling circulations year-on-year. With fewer readers and brands shifting their advertising pounds away from traditional media into digital, The Independent probably won’t be the last national publication to go completely digital. Advertisers go where their audience is, and their audience is increasingly online. Justin Taylor, MD UK, Teads adds: “Advertisers follow eyeballs, and the print circulations of most publishers are dwarfed by their vast digital audiences.”

So, online is where it’s at. But what challenges will The Independent face when it purely focuses on its digital proposition from the end of March? Consistency in the quality of its content is crucial. The Independent made a name for itself as an agenda-setting broadsheet with an 'independent' voice and some big-name journalists on its roster. It’s been heavily criticised in the past for not following through with that same level of quality content on its website; with some claiming the website to be lightweight and not representative of the newspaper at all. Some difficult conversations will have to happen to ensure that those big-name writers will continue on as journalists for The Independent when it transforms into its digital-only guise.

Independent.co.uk will not exist without successful monetisation. The Independent claims to already be running a profitable site; so, the digital focus should come very naturally to the publisher. According to Taylor, The Independent will need to “find a way to deliver digital advertising that works for brands, without alienating readers”.

Aidan Joyce, CEO and co-founder, Oriel comments: “With an online-only business model, it will be important to carefully assess digital revenue streams. Advertising is the lifeblood for many publishers; but with revenues being impacted by the rise in ad-blocking, fast action is needed to improve the advertising experience for consumers.”

If The Independent goes down the route of requesting site visitors to turn off ad blockers to access content, they could risk annoying valuable readers. Taking a leaf out of City AM's book (that trialled blocking content for those with ad blockers enabled back in October 2015), The Independent will need to ensure that it's not losing out on the potential added value a user that refuses to disable an ad blocker could bring; like paying it forward through commenting and social sharing. Despite needing to be a viable business and actually making a profit, news publishers are still providing a valuable service to their readers in the form of education and information and the purpose of the site mustn’t be lost or diminished in favour of advertising revenue.

Readers who disable their ad blockers clearly respect the value exchange between reader and publisher; which means they don’t feel the ads to be as intrusive as part of their overall experience. The Independent needs to ensure that it can get the balance right between educating its readers as to the value of disabling their ad blockers and ensuring it is focusing on optimising the ad experience. It’s one thing convincing a reader in the first instance to disable his/her ad blocker. The next big hurdle is not then to break that reader’s trust by serving intrusive, irrelevant ads – prove to the reader that the right decision was made and the trust is there for the site to be whitelisted for future visits. It’s not as black and white as ad blocking or not; publishers can do more to ensure that, once they have encouraged a reader to enter, they follow through with a promise of serving relevant content that doesn’t detract from the site’s style or purpose. The Independent is said to be launching an app subscription service on mobile and tablet. But whether upselling premium content packages is the answer to lost ad revenues through ad blocking remains to be seen. Taylor confirms: “It’s absolutely critical that publishers focus on digital ad formats that engage, rather than enrage, consumers. That will ensure they generate sufficient digital advertising revenues to pay for the quality journalism which is so important to society.”

Native advertising will clearly need to play a fundamental role in the diversification of The Independent’s revenue streams. Following the strategy of The Huffington Post, and their investigation into how accurately signposted native advertising can create the optimal user experience for its audience, The Independent couldn’t go far wrong by working closely with its pool of advertisers to ensure that content creation and distribution merges seamlessly with the site’s properties.

The Independent has a core loyal base of readers who will certainly be rooting for it to succeed. It’s also not averse to experimenting to keep up with its young audience, and the move to go all-digital is surely evidence of that. The Independent appears to be well placed in this battle for survival in a digital world; and this move means focus can be restored and investment channelled into areas that garner profitability, while not tainting The Independent brand.