At the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille (3 June 2026), Le Monde’s Chief Digital Officer Lou Grasser sat down with YouTube’s VP for EMEA, Pedro Pina, for a fireside chat moderated by Marion Ranchet (Streaming Made Easy). The session, “Transforming Journalism on YouTube,” looked at how a reference newspaper is going video-first without becoming a TV channel. Le Monde now does 4 million video views a day. Here is what they shared.

> Le Monde does 4 million video views a day against 6 million site visits. Followers are only 25% of that traffic, so YouTube works as a discovery engine rather than a loyalty channel

> Views grew 25% in 2025, driven by long formats. The deliberate choice was to invest in the newsroom and in staff journalists on camera, not a standalone TV channel or external creators

> YouTube reports 15 billion news views a year, and its revenue share leaves publishers with more than half of what they monetise on the platform

> YouTube is building paywall integration with publishers' own subscription systems, with Le Monde as a pilot partner. Today there is no way to gate video on the platform at all

> YouTube's advice: be personality-driven and direct to camera, don't copy-paste a TV format, and hire someone with real channel-management experience to train the in-house team

Why Le Monde invests in YouTube

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At its stand at VivaTech, on Tuesday 17 June 2026, Les Echos devoted a session to a question every publisher knows: “What is the answer to French readers’ information fatigue?”. On the agenda: the data-backed diagnosis from Jean-Baptiste Leroux (OpinionWay), the brand’s values presented by Célia Pénavaire (journalist and digital editor-in-chief at Les Echos), then the product answer led by Yasmine Maslouhi, Director of subscription activities and revenue at Les Echos: a new offer called « La Sélection ».

> According to OpinionWay, the average French person consumes about 6 media families a day, 20% already use a generative AI to get informed, but a majority say they feel overwhelmed, even fatigued, by the news

> Faced with information fatigue, unlimited access is not the answer. Les Echos is instead making the opposite bet, that of selection

> "La Sélection" consists of between 9 and 15 articles a day, chosen from a daily output of 120 to 150 pieces, following a reader-needs grid (inform, reflect, get inspired, develop, unwind) and a strict quota discipline

> Three platforms (a dedicated tab in the app, a section on the site, a daily newsletter), a weekly long read on Saturdays, and 5 shareable articles a month. Early bird price sits at €9.90 a month

The diagnosis: more information, but a consumption that comes at a high psychological cost

Jean-Baptiste Leroux (OpinionWay) set the scene. Information fatigue, also called information overload, is a concept born among American sociologists in the 1970s, taken up in Europe and reworked by Edgar Morin around the idea of an “information cloud”, the body of information delivered each day by the basket of media we consume. The average French person consumes around 6 media families a day (television, radio, press, social media, podcasts, and now AI). A live test in the room: roughly 20% of French people use a generative AI such as ChatGPT to get informed about the news.

The first virtue of this cloud is that it informs people better than 20 years ago, even as the world is seen as increasingly complex. But the trade-off is heavy: the feeling of always seeing the same information, the sense, at the end of the day, of not having learned much, and a majority of French people who say they feel overwhelmed, even fatigued, by the news. For some of them, the news is even seen as depressing.

It is not the information itself that is depressing, it is the way it is prioritised and treated. If you only put forward hot, anxiety-inducing news, with a sensationalist treatment, you create anxiety.

Jean-Baptiste Leroux, OpinionWay

His metaphor: the ocean. Immediacy-driven media stay at the surface, on the foam of the waves. Media that take you down to the depths teach you something, but that is more demanding. All of this in a climate of distrust, fuelled by the sense that fake news is multiplying and the impression that media favour the clash of egos and ideas over explanation and analysis. In response, French people build their own strategies: cross-checking sources, talking about the news with those close to them (83% see the news as a topic to discuss with the people around them), taking back control to choose their information rather than endure it, favouring media that help them understand, easing the pressure by slowing down their consumption, and finally accepting that quality information has value and must be paid for. Total avoidance, for its part, concerns only 10 to 15% of French people.

Les Echos’ answer: four editorial pillars and an assumed responsibility

Yasmine Maslouhi first noted that journalists feel this fatigue too, and that it is wrong to believe only anxiety-inducing content works: inspiring and useful content, success stories or profiles of business leaders, work just as well. The group’s answer rests on four editorial pillars. Two belong to the title’s historic DNA, more than a hundred years old: reliability (systematic verification of every piece of information, across all platforms, drawing on a newsroom of experts) and impartiality (analysing the facts without taking sides, decoding the economy and the life of companies). Two are more recent: inspiration (solutions journalism, which does not just note a problem but shows who is solving it) and useful information, for professional as well as personal life (handling a toxic manager, for example).

It is essential for us to give people back a taste for the news, and a taste for reading. We want to live in a society where people read, where everyone can give themselves at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted reading. It is also a societal stake: to take an informed part in public life, people need to rediscover a taste for information.

Yasmine Maslouhi, Director of subscription activities and revenue, Les Echos

Two needs, two answers: unlimited on one side, selection on the other

The most interesting strategic point for publishers lies in a deliberately segmented view of needs. On one side, readers who use Les Echos daily to work, to prepare business plans or pitches. For them, the answer remains unlimited access to the documentation and to 35 years of archives, complemented by a new AI assistant designed to boost their daily productivity. On the other, those looking for a trusted daily intellectual companion. For that need, Les Echos’ position is clear: unlimited access is not the answer.

Unlimited access has been used a lot as a promise by telecoms and by media. Today, with this information fatigue, we believe a different promise is needed. We have chosen almost the opposite promise: selection.

Yasmine Maslouhi, Les Echos

“La Sélection”: three criteria, three values, one editorial discipline

“La Sélection” rests on three core criteria. Balance first: the goal is no longer breaking news at all costs (others do breaking news better than Les Echos), but information that is useful for understanding the world and taking a step back. Calm next: plural voices and op-eds, but grounded in evidence-based, balanced arguments. Impartiality finally, the title’s historic value.

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The Audiencers' team spent the first three days of June in Marseille for WAN-IFRA's 77th World News Media Congress (1–3 June 2026). Three days, one dominant question: what does AI mean for the value, and future of journalism? We sat through a dozen sessions to share a wrap-up of the event, and the conversations that mattered most.

 3 things to take from this recap
> Rethink your "traffic" metric: consider tracking the share of your content AI can't easily copy or summarize, alongside reach
> If you're negotiating an AI licensing deal, know whether you're getting a product partnership or just a defensive payout, they're not the same thing
> Audit how your newsroom's time actually splits across production, pre-, and post-publication before assuming AI tools are the fix

The AI reckoning: rights, traffic, and the first real deals

AG Sulzberger (NYT): the “original sin,” and an 8-point plan

The congress opened on its hardest line. AG Sulzberger (Chairman & Publisher, The New York Times) argued that generative AI is built on an “original sin” (the unprecedented theft of publishers’ intellectual property) and that this theft is now re-enacted “countless times every single day.” His most effective passage broke an AI model into four inputs: talent, compute, energy and data. The first three are paid for, handsomely; the fourth, books, films, music, journalism, is taken without consent or compensation. No tech CEO would ask their engineers to work for free or steal chips from an Nvidia plant; on data, “we just take” has become the norm.

“Tech giants strip-mine news websites… that otherwise would go to the news organisations that created this work.”

AG Sulzberger, Chairman & Publisher, The New York Times

He was careful to add he is not anti-AI (the NYT uses these tools internally) and that his target is the companies’ choices, not the technology.

The scale he put on the table: the NYT publishes ~500,000 original works a year for over $2bn, and remains the single largest source of proprietary data in a major dataset used to train many different models. Meanwhile the Google click is 10x harder than a decade ago, rival AI models send 96% less referral traffic than a Google search, and the largest news sites tracked by comScore have lost 45%+ of traffic in four years. His action plan came in eight points — four to defend your rights (stand up for them, deal carefully, push legislators, join together) and four to strengthen your title (use AI the right way, be a destination first, focus on original reporting, explain why journalism matters). He closed by restoring the half of the Stewart Brand quote everyone forgets:

The post Inside WAN-IFRA Marseille 2026: the deals, the data, and the fight for what journalism is worth appeared first on Audiencers.

Le Nouvel Obs is one of France’s most iconic media brands, with a unique editorial legacy. But for years, its digital strategy was largely driven by audience volume. When Sandro Martin arrived as CEO in September 2024, traffic had already been declining for nearly two years. Rather than chasing more content and more clicks, the team chose a different path: fewer articles, stronger editorial choices, and a renewed focus on reader value.

In this interview, Sandro Martin explains how Le Nouvel Obs reshaped its editorial production, data culture, newsroom organization, newsletters, and reader relationship strategy to build a more differentiated and sustainable digital model.

> Le Nouvel Obs cut its article output by nearly 30% and everything went up: pageviews rose 30% year on year, median pageviews per article rose 50%, and digital subscriptions rose 35%

> The cuts were structural rather than across the board. Raw newswire reposts went, print-shaped cultural reviews became digital-first compilations, and premium content doubled as a share of the feed

> The mechanism is simple: fewer pieces competing for the same homepage and distribution means each surviving article reaches more people, which lifts propensity to subscribe

> A daily morning briefing puts editorial and data in the same room, and deliberately spotlights what worked rather than what flopped. They chose positive reinforcement over chasing underperformers

Le Nouvel Obs is a prestigious publication with a unique place in French history, but for a long time digital strategy was based solely on audience numbers. When you arrived, those numbers had been declining for nearly two years. How did you respond?

In 2024, our digital strategy was based primarily on two metrics: overall audience and subscriber growth, with no real prioritization. However, our audience had indeed been in steady decline for nearly 24 months, and our ability to recruit new subscribers had plateaued at levels lower than those of our direct competitors.

In recent years, Le Nouvel Obs had undertaken a major overhaul of its platforms, which is already a positive step, but without completely rethinking how they align with the editorial and marketing strategy.

So, when I arrived, Editor-in-Chief Cécile Prieur and I sought to realign these three dimensions—editorial, marketing, and user experience—around shared priorities. My arrival as the new CEO allowed us to revisit issues with the editorial team and make it a central pillar of our transformation. This initiative was launched in late 2024, following a study trip to the United States, which served as the catalyst.

To get started, you brought in an outside consultant. What was the idea behind that. To get an outside perspective, or to speed things up?

We did indeed decide to work with Max Leroy, an Audience and Product Strategist. Having spent the early part of his career in the US—notably at CNN and The New York Times—and later at POLITICO Europe, Max brought a wealth of international experience. Our goal wasn’t to outsource the strategic thinking, but rather to save time, structure our approach, and objectively validate our intuitions through macro-level data analysis and international benchmarks.

This collaboration allowed us to quickly identify our true priorities and rule out several false leads. Four central objectives emerged:

• Showcase our editorial value-add more effectively in the digital space, where the flood of breaking news often diluted our core offering
• Support the evolution of editorial production to better meet our readers’ changing needs
• Strengthen reader relationships by moving beyond the mere logic of traffic and pageviews
• Evolve our organization to focus more energy, expertise, and decision-making power on digital platforms

We opted for a highly pragmatic approach that combined data analysis, team feedback, and strategic planning workshops. The goal was to arrive at actionable outcomes and shared decisions in order to begin implementation.

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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.

> You become what you measure. At Amedia, older subscribers were the majority, so they dominated the dashboards and quietly defined what counted as high-performing content

> The fix was blunt: filter analytics to readers under 40 only, making 90% of subscribers invisible to the newsroom. What the team optimised for changed as soon as what it could see changed

> This wasn't a matter of adding a few pieces "for young people". At Romerikes Blad the editorial team overhauled its working methods and which topics it treated as priorities

> It didn't cost them older readers. The sharper focus made the journalism more relevant overall: at Romerikes Blad, under-40 subscribers grew 30% in nine months and total readership and subscriptions rose too

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.

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You're reading The Audiencers' newsletter #80 sent out on January 7th, 2026. To receive future newsletters straight to your inbox every two weeks, sign up here.

Marion here, I’m the (French) Publisher and CEO of Audiencers – Madeleine, currently enjoying the thousand wonders of Nicaragua (ie: beaches and sunset beers), has left me the keys to this newsletter so that we don’t let you wander alone in the audience engagement world for the first half of January.

Happy New Year! I wish you, and those you love, countless small joys and immense happiness.

In today’s edition: French jokes and a selection of last year’s articles  gifted  to celebrate the New Year (you can click on all of them, none will be paywalled if you come from this newsletter – yes, it’s a little Poool trick that works quite well):

• Value proposition: Being able to say why people should buy your product is the first step before any other
• KPIs: Your most valuable newsroom indicator is no longer reach but belonging
• Editorial: What other format than articles could work for what you have to say?
• Retention: What a fitness app has to teach us about habits building
• How do the others do it? The ultimate case study list to inspire your reader revenue model, sorted by type of strategy

“Why should I subscribe?”

Before optimizing your paywall, pricing or conversion funnels, there’s a more fundamental question to answer : why should anyone pay you?

This article walks you through a rigorous, battle-tested method to define a clear, compelling value proposition – one that aligns editorial, product and marketing teams, and actually resonates with your audiences.

From the Value Proposition Canvas to the Golden Circle, with concrete media examples throughout, it gives you the tools to write sharper conversion messages, stronger offer pages and more convincing campaigns.

> If you’re launching (or relaunching) a premium strategy, this is the unavoidable starting point, just right here.

Why the most valuable newsroom KPI is no longer reach but belonging

Pageviews and reach still look good in dashboards, but they no longer explain what really drives loyalty, retention and revenue.

This article makes a clear case for shifting newsroom KPIs from visibility and interaction to belonging – the signal that readers return, build habits and truly care.

Drawing on concrete examples from the Financial Times, Der Spiegel and community-driven publishers, it shows why engagement alone is not enough and how belonging becomes a stronger predictor of long-term value.

> If you’re rethinking success in a subscription-led world, this piece helps redefine what actually matters.

When the article is no longer enough: formats that outperform the article on news apps

For mobile audiences, the article is no longer the obvious entry point – and often not the place where attention actually lands.

This piece challenges the article-centric mindset and shows how formats have become the real interface between journalism and product. Through 10 concrete, mobile-first formats used by leading publishers (from threads to live feeds, polls and timelines), it explains how to capture attention earlier, reduce friction and guide readers more gently toward depth.

> If your journalism is strong but your product assumes too much from users, this article will change how you design stories.

Retention: what a fitness app has to teach us about habits building

What can a fitness app teach newsrooms about engagement, retention and habit-building? Quite a lot, it turns out.

This deep dive breaks down how Freeletics keeps users coming back every day – through emotional motivation, smart onboarding, streaks, community challenges and radical personalization. Each lesson is easy to translate to media or SaaS products, from reducing conversion friction to designing rituals that stick.

> If you’re trying to move from occasional use to real habit, this article is packed with concrete, transferable ideas.

How do others do it? Our ultimate case study list

Looking for concrete inspiration, proven tactics or solid benchmarks – without starting from scratch every time? This curated index brings together every Audiencers article that breaks down a winning strategy from publishers around the world. Organised by topic (engagement, paywalls, subscriptions, onboarding, AI, apps, retention and more), it’s designed to be bookmarked and reused whenever you need ideas, comparisons or ammunition for internal discussions.

> A practical map of what’s actually working in reader revenue today.

See you in 2 weeks for the next newsletter,

Marion

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This article summarizes the session presented by Maxime Moné (CEO of Poool) and Virginie Clève (founder of Largow, a consulting agency) at the Audiencers Festival Paris on September 16, 2025. Together, they explored the question of “SEO & Paywalls: how can you combine audience and subscriptions in the age of AI?”

This presentation summarized in 5 points: 

- Choosing the paywall type (super hard/hard/soft) should be a strategic decision, not a technical one: each option has a different impact on visibility, content protection, and subscription conversion.

- Anticipate AI: allowing Google to read your content also means opening the door to ChatGPT or Perplexity; blocking Google risks a drop in SEO.

- Secure markup, and calibrate text before the paywall to prevent content leakage and find the balance between SEO (≥ 800 characters) and conversion.

- Adopt a hybrid blocking model: adjust the level of openness according to the value, lifespan, and type of content, rather than a single rule.

- Don't confuse protection with growth: blocking AI protects your content, but only a strong brand and a clear offering will create subscribers.

The post Paywalls & SEO in the AI era appeared first on Audiencers.

This article summarizes the session given by Max Leroy, Audience & Product Strategist, formerly of The New York Times, CNN, and POLITICO, at The Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on September 16th, 2025.

This session in 5 bullet points:

• The real danger to the media? Not AI or Google, but our disconnect from readers’ needs.
• Plummeting trust, dwindling audiences, refusal to pay: in any other industry, we would be talking about the collapse of product-market fit.
• Urgent action is needed: we must stop pointless obsessions and return to users’ needs.
• This series of articles presents five toxic obsessions and offers five useful obsessions for the sustainability of the media: short circuits, communities, respect for audience needs, experimentation, and advertising/UX balance.
• This second chapter covers obsession number two: refusing to interact with audiences

What if the greatest threat to the media were neither AI, nor the “big bad wolf” Google, nor the decline in social traffic, not even the crisis in publishers’ business model? What if the real problem were us? Us and our persistent inability to take an interest in those we are supposed to serve: our readers.

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This article summarizes the session given by Fabien Mulot, Marketing Director at L’Équipe, at The Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on September 16, 2025.

> After the acquisition spike from the Paris 2024 Olympics, L'Équipe built 12 retention projects around four lifecycle moments: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention and re-subscription, each with its own indicator

> The number that drove everything: every additional paid article read in the first three days cuts month-one churn by five points. Onboarding now pushes new subscribers to read two

> That onboarding loop shows what the subscription includes, prompts personalisation through alerts, newsletters and favourites, then serves paid content matched to those stated interests

> The cancellation form was rebuilt through A/B testing. Adding a summary screen and showing personalised discounts both improved retention

> An RFV engagement score adapted to L'Équipe guides every decision, with a strategic threshold of 100. Two-thirds of subscribers sit above it

How can subscribers be retained once the Olympic Games are over? For L’Équipe, the challenge is immense: transforming the momentum of a global event into lasting loyalty. Fabien Mulot shared the methods implemented in 2025, which he summarized as “12 projects” organized around four stages in subscribers lifecycle: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention, and re-subscription:

Each stage has been assigned its own performance indicator:

1. Onboarding: the crucial first 3 days

Data analysis showed a strong correlation between immediate consumption and retention. Reading at least two paid articles within the first three days significantly reduces churn M+1.

This is the core of L’Équipe’s new onboarding strategy: a web and app loop that showcases the benefits of subscription, encourages users to personalize their experience (alerts, newsletters, favorites), and then prompts them to immediately read paid content tailored to their interests.

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This article summarises the session given by Mathias Douchet, Chief Product Officer at The Telegraph, during the Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on 16th September 2025. The slides from his presentation can be downloaded at the end of the article.

> The Telegraph puts around 90% of its product resources into the mobile app, with teams built around it. App usage is now the single most predictive indicator of subscriber retention

> That displaced what they used to prioritise. Multi-channel engagement and newsletter signups were the signals they watched before, and app usage beats both

> The numbers behind it: app users have eight more sessions a week than web users, and 30-day retention is six percentage points higher. App usage grew 15% in a year

> Access is light freemium: the home screen and a few articles open, the rest for subscribers, with a 14-day trial for new app users in exchange for an email. It converts better than a standard paywall

> The catch they are open about is that people drop off when the trial ends unless the follow-up is well orchestrated, so activation after day 14 is the live problem

Founded in 1855, The Telegraph is one of the UK’s leading news outlets, with 30 million monthly readers across its website, app and print editions, and over a million subscribers.

The product culture is long-standing and well-established, with the ability to make clear and decisive decisions about subscriptions and the reader experience.

The mobile app: a flagship product

In 2022, The Telegraph merged its two apps: the first was a digital version of the newspaper – highly regarded but little used; the second was a live feed version – more widely distributed but not very popular.

The current app is the result of 3-4 years of work, with engaging additional features such as games, news feeds, discoveries and newsletters.

The Telegraph app in a few words: 
-> Freemium model: a selection of free articles, the rest is reserved for subscribers
-> A 14-day free trial is offered to new app users
-> App usage has increased by 15% in a year
-> 8 more sessions each week vs web
-> 6 percentage points higher 30-day retention vs web

Of all the projects tested in recent years, not everything has worked, and that’s key to the approach: test quickly, keep what works, and discard the rest.

The access model is simple: light freemium. The home screen and a few articles are visible to everyone, while the rest is reserved for subscribers. To compensate for the significant amount of closed content, new app users are offered a 14-day trial, available via email. This allows for data collection and has proved more valuable to conversion rates than a standard paywall. The downside however is that users may drop out after 14 days if the follow-up is not well orchestrated, hence the ongoing work on activation and retention after the trial.

The app significantly out-performs web

Mobile app users have eight more sessions per week than web users and show six more subscription retention points at 30 days.

App usage is becoming the most predictive indicator of retention, ahead of other signals that were previously considered priorities, such as multi-channel engagement and newsletter subscriptions. This justifies the strategic refocusing and budget shift.

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