The Norwegian group Amedia started with a troubling observation: its publications had more subscribers over the age of 80 than under the age of 40. To break this deadlock, their team tested a radical approach in two local newsrooms: tailoring editorial content exclusively to the behaviors of readers under 40. The result: a product deemed more relevant for all generations and, at one of its publications, Romerikes Blad, a 30% increase in the under-40 demographic over nine months.
How can you attract younger subscribers when daily analytics tools constantly push you to optimize content for your existing audience? The solution proposed by the Norwegian group is less about marketing and more about editorial strategy. It’s based on a simple idea: an editorial team eventually becomes very good at serving the audience that dominates its analytics dashboards. And at Amedia, that audience was too old to ensure the renewal of its subscriber base.
Janne Rygh, editorial content developer at Amedia, outlined this new strategy at the INMA Subscription Summit in Toronto.
This article summarized in 5 points
- The Norwegian group Amedia had more subscribers over the age of 80 than subscribers under the age of 40
- Rygh explained that the group’s dashboards naturally steered editorial teams toward the expectations of the majority audience, which was older
- To correct this bias, Amedia made 90% of its subscribers invisible in its management tools and isolated the metrics for those under 40
- This refocusing has shifted editorial priorities and improved both the overall readership and the share of young readers
- At Romerikes Blad, one of the titles tested, the under-40 segment grew by 30% in nine months
More subscribers over 80 than under 40
It’s worth reiterating the starting point: Amedia is not a group lagging behind in digital. It’s Norway’s largest newspaper publisher, with 110 newspapers, 20 partner newspapers, 2 million daily readers, and 580,000 100% digital subscribers. By the end of 2023, their subscriber base stood at 684,000, with over 68% being digital subscribers, and nearly 90% of subscribers reading content digitally.
