You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #71 sent out on September 3rd, 2025. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.
This time of year is called “La rentrée” in French, which literally translates to “The return”… sounds a bit like a horror movie sequel 😅 but I hope your “rentrée” goes smoother than that!
In today’s newsletter:
- Washington Post shows us what dynamicity is all about withtheir “resubscribe” paywall
- Building a subscription product for young readers: how Mediahuis is converting the under 26-year-olds
- “Changes in reader habits mean that we must also evolve” – Relaunching The Guardian app
- AI generated question prompts: how the FT encourages more thoughtful commenting
Building a subscription product for young readers
Young readers are willing to pay, you just have to provide the right value!
At our recent London Festival, Katia Debusschere, Manager of Acquisition and Conversions at Mediahuis nv opened the floor with a statement that most weren’t expecting – unlike assumptions, research has proven that most US Millennials and Gen Z audiences are paying for news. Notably, however, they’re twice as likely to pay for or donate to email newsletters, video blogs, or audio podcasts from independent creators than pay for newspapers in print or digital.
So the challenge is in offering value.
This made Mediahuis think – instead of their classic 20% discount for students, they should build a product specifically for these audiences, with experiences that genuinely resonate with younger readers, fostering a sense of community and belonging, with snackable news formats, content adapted to time restraints and formats that reflect current reading habits on social media.
Introducing, the under-26 subscription
> The focus of this new subscription bundle was to familiarize young people with newspapers, providing them with reliable information, fighting fake news without breaking the bank
> A bundled, all-inclusive access: “All the news, one subscription”
🗞️ One subscription, five trusted news brands: Full digital access to De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad, Gazet van Antwerpen, Het Belang van Limburg, and De Gentenaar
💷 Just €1 per week: Possibility to cancel monthly, with the price locked in for 3 years
🤳 Seamless experience across platforms: Whether they click through from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or browse via websites or apps
⌨️ Personal login: Secure and non-shareable access for each subscriber
> Full takeaways from Katia’s session on The Audiencers
Relaunching The Guardian app
“Changes in reader habits mean that we must also evolve.”
Three quarters of The Guardian’s digital readers now access daily journalism via mobile devices. The premium news app, which prompts users to subscribe after reading a set number of articles, attracts one million daily users and has become the second biggest revenue driver for the Guardian.
But reader behaviour is changing: from the rise of AI chatbots and ‘click-less’ news, to the growing dominance of video-driven content on social media platforms like TikTok, as well as increasing levels of news fatigue and avoidance.
To continue to benefit from new installs, increased RFV and casual mobile web users converting into loyal app users, The Guardian needs to adapt too.
So, in May 2025, Craig Law and the team relaunched The Guardian News app, with new features and a major redesign, focusing on:
> Discovery & personalisation, to combat news overwhelm
“It’s important to give users the ability to craft a feed of topics and stories they want to read quickly and easily without the need for endless scrolling.”
> Audio experiences, to combat time limitations for long-reads
“To provide accessibility and flexibility to how users consume journalism”
> Upgrading downtime
“To provide readers with a reason to use our app in those moments of downtime that doesn’t involve news”
How the FT encourages more thoughtful commenting with AI generated questions
At Financial Times, active B2C subscribers who write comments can be up to four times more engaged than those who don’t, and 7% of habitual users post comments, compared to a tiny proportion among non-habitual users.
They know that posting comments has the single biggest impact on habit strength. But it is also one of the rarest behaviours on the site. So how do they try to change that?
-> A quiet, thought-provoking intervention
About two-thirds of the way through an article, the team added a short question, encouraging readers to pause, think a little more deeply and join the conversation in the comments.
The question didn’t come from the writer or editor of the piece. Instead, they used generative AI to suggest three options, based on the content of the article, which were reviewed and sorted by the Editorial community team. The ambition is to enable a simple, but time-consuming task to be done quickly at scale across the newsroom.
-> Results were modest but encouraging – comment views rose by 3.5 percent, and 11.5 percent of readers who hadn’t viewed any comments in the previous month did so this month. More interesting, though, was the shift in tone.
“Since we added the AI discussion prompt, the tone of the comments has definitely improved. By nudging readers to focus on a specific topic, it’s helped keep conversations on track and reduced off-topic or unproductive rants.”
This wasn’t a complicated experiment. The value came from keeping it simple, applying editorial judgement, and listening to what readers respond to. They learned that the right question doesn’t just lead to replies. It creates space for better conversations.
> Full article on The Audiencers
The attention to detail with a targeted “resubscribe” paywall and CTA button in the header at Washington Post
This is what dynamic strategies are all about.
Making a reader feel valued, like they’re being spoken to personally, like your offer is built especially for them, like you missed having them as a subscriber.
Great job The Washington Post team.
To add to your reading list
- Gain clarity on your purpose: the template that helps teams make faster, better decisions
- A deeper look at people’s willingness to pay for news
- Publishers weigh Substack opportunity and risk
- The Future of SEO for News Publishers in 2025: Crafting the Perfect Recipe for the Best Summer Ice Cream
See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,
Madeleine
