All the publishers I spoke with over the last two weeks are scratching their heads; they wonder: how to adjust a web strategy — today mostly free — to the upcoming paid-for mechanism on the iPad. Let’s put it this way. You have a web site, mostly ad-supported. You design a great iPad application with a better user experience and richer content. Enough to charge for it, something like $9 a month.
Now the reader’s perspective: I enjoyed the free website on my beautiful iPad browser. What could lead me to pay for the same content in an iPad application? Much better graphic? No. Much better navigation? Probaby not.
To provide oxygen for the paid-for app system, publishers will inevitably have to off-load content and features from their free web — a lot of them.
This could lead to two major evolutions of digital media:

1 / Acceleration of paywall deployments as publishers will move toward triple play paid-for offers: one subscription access to static (PC); mobile (smartphone) and half-nomad (iPad) platforms.

2 / The progressive transformation of free rich websites into stripped-down versions with little or no value-added contents. In other words, news material expensive to produce, high value analysis and prominent bylines will be available on the triple-play system described above. At the same time, the free web will carry “commodity news” (that will be universally accessible everywhere, especially on portals), and cheap blogging, games and services.