By Selma Stern, Independent Advisor, and Pete Doucette, Senior Managing Director, Mather

Mather’s inaugural German News Media Audience Benchmark recorded a staggering result: German news brands grew audience +13% year-over-year in April, while US brands fell more than 17% in the same window. Built on Similarweb, Listener and Sophi data across 44 German news brands, the benchmark found the majority of them posting positive year-over-year growth. The gap between Germany and the US widened through the first quarter of 2026.

Since the report launched, we’ve been analyzing why this is happening. There are a few structural reasons: a different election cycle, a later arrival of AI overviews, more Android phones (and therefore more Google Discover traffic). But these macro trends don’t explain why the recovery is concentrated in regional publishers, why it shows up in engagement and not just reach, or why Germany rebounded inside the same platform environment US media blames for its own decline.

An independent INMA analysis of DACH publishers’ own first-party data points the same direction as ours. INMA’s Grzegorz Piechota put it best when we compared notes: “They are lucky in a way, but they also do something with their luck.”

We have four hypotheses for what’s actually going on. One is sheer luck, one has to do with good choices made in the past, and two might travel.

The post “Do something with your luck”: What German news brands are doing right appeared first on Audiencers.

In a world of falling traffic, trust and the increasing use of AI, building relationships with readers is more important than ever. It’s the difference between a fly-by and a loyal, returning user who interacts meaningfully, feels a sense of belonging with your brand, who advocates for you and brings in new audiences.

It’s a strategy that many publishers are already benefiting from.

This article shares a few of these case studies, diving into what’s working, sharing lessons to take away and articles to dive in deeper.

1. The New York Times: reporters in the comments

The New York Times recently turned comments into an editorial product to develop relationships with readers and enhance the perceived expertise and trust in journalists.

What’s working

A new “Join the Conversation” section of The New York Times was launched earlier in 2026, creating a discussion dedicated space for Times readers and reporters.

• On the article page, a featured comment modal directs readers toward the conversation window, which includes a refreshed layout and reader profile icons
• On some articles, Times reporters have shared thread-style breakdowns of their story and reporting process, adding context for readers who jump straight to the comments. These summaries, along with new inline headshots, build on the “enhanced bylines” introduced in 2023, which were aimed at highlighting journalists’ work

• Conversations are led by a direct question, followed by a comment from one of The Times’ journalists.

• The best contributions are highlighted and surfaced

This strategy helps conversations to feel valuable, and participation feels meaningful. Instead of noise, comments become an extension of the journalism.

What you should steal from The New York Times’ model

• Reframe comments as an editorial space, designed for quality over scale
• Lead the discussion with a direct question and a trusted voice
• Involve journalists directly in the conversations, ideally with a tag (think X’s blue tick), text or photo to highlight their position

Dive deeper into The New York Times’ model

• The New York Times is becoming subscription infrastructure for other publishers
• The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed

2. Financial Times: loyalty isn’t built by speaking louder, it’s built by speaking with

Communities are built on trust, and for FT, this sits at the center of the brand. What’s more, it’s specifically recognized as a business driver. 58% of subscribers chose the FT specifically because they needed a reliable news source they could trust. To sustain it, they must strike a balance between trust in what they say, through quality and credibility of journalism, and trust in what they do, through the experience delivered at every touch point.

What’s working

Commenting has been a significant part of FT’s community-building efforts, especially as those who read the comments are 11x more engaged than those that don’t, and commenters themselves are 46x more engaged than those that don’t read or write comments.

• Community guidelines are easy to find and understand
• AI-powered moderation is being used to bring up the moderation baseline, re-trained off human comments, with humans still kept in the loop
• Editorially-reviewed AI-generated question encourage readers to join the conversation and be more thoughtful in their commenting

• A live Q&A feature, designed to encourage broader participation and lift conversation into the story

The team have also worked hard to cultivate “evangelical” communities, creating spaces for “authentic” and “nerdy” interactions that go beyond standard corporate communication.

The FT Alphaville section for instance has developed a core of evangelical fans by maintaining an authentic tone that appeals to readers on a personal level.

• It’s free to read
• Journalists engage directly with readers
• It doesn’t feel corporate or that the tone is being moderated
• You can meet the journalists in real life at small, unashamedly nerdy events!

These micro-communities focus on specific niches where belonging forms most naturally.

To deepen this advocacy, the FT also launched the Trusted Voices marketing pilot in 2025.

• Personal branding: By elevating individual writers and creating personal brands, the FT encourages readers to defend and promote specific journalists, which in turn reinforces their loyalty to the parent publication.
• Broadening inclusivity: Initiatives to make the FT feel less like a “gendered entity” (moving from 80% male in 2016 to 92% non-gendered perception in 2025) have been essential in making more people feel they belong, thus empowering a more diverse group of advocates.

What you should steal from FT’s model

• Move beyond engagement metrics towards trust, belonging and advocacy
• Use AI to reduce resources needed on moderation, but keep humans in the loop in the right places to build relationships with readers
• Consider building, or making use of existing, external, micro-communities that focus on specific niches – this is where belonging builds most naturally

Dive deeper into FT’s strategy

• Smarter discussions thanks to AI-generated talking points
• Building and serving communities with Ryan Y. Kellett, Financial Times and THECITY

3. Der Spiegel: from comments to conversations

The team at Der Spiegel found that whilst commenting was a huge part of their audience engagement strategy, conversations on a single topic were happening in multiple places across the site, diluting the potential value of this feature.

What’s working

The solution: a debating product inside of their website

• Qualitative research found that users associate trust and safety with these conversations when they happen under the DER SPIEGEL branding, so clear branding and a custom design ensures audiences feel confident that they’re in a safe space
• No possibility of “disliking” a comment, only liking

• They decided against real-name commenting after research that suggested users wouldn’t feel comfortable with this. They also have an account verification process, even for free members
• The feature is promoted in subscriber onboarding to increase regular usage amongst subscribers.
• And debates are integrated into editorial content and vice versa to encourage recirculation. Notice the high visibility of premium (S+) content here to promote the value of subscription.

Mexico’s Milenio has done something similar but with video content, fostering deep discussions on everyday life topics (Mexican lifestyle and social topics).

What you should steal from Der Spiegel’s model

• Test new, innovative formats to maximize the value of community engagement and encourage more guided interaction
• Integrate community features into the registration and subscription funnel
• Even if the community isn’t commenting at the end of articles, link community to content to encourage recirculation and continued engagement

Dive deeper into Der Spiegel’s strategy

• Going further with interactive engagement: introducing the debating feature
• Audience Research: identifying Key Engagement Drivers at DER SPIEGEL

4. The Times: reader-led journalism

The leading publishers have created an eco-system where readers fuel journalism that then fuels reader conversations, and so on. This is exactly what they’ve established at The Times & Sunday Times in the UK.

What’s working

After seeing conversations spark from a certain topic or article in the comments section, The Times’ Reader Comment Journalists reply directly to readers or set up interviews to dive deeper into the topic, with the goal of creating reader-led articles.

“Reader-led articles give a direct voice to our readers, but it also improves our journalism! The piece on the right below came from a call-out at the bottom of an article that got an amazing response from people telling us about how they beat their diagnoses. We ran it as a story and it really humanized the journalism. The other piece came from the simple idea of asking why people were running the London marathon. It pulled very touching stories together, and you could see in the comments section how positive the reaction was. These reader-led articles often bring yet more valued conversation within the community.” – Peter Jackson, Reader Comment Editor at The Times and Sunday Times

Live Q&As with journalists are another important engagement tool to directly connect The Time’s readers and writers.

The Times works with polls and embedded carousels to elevate comments, and they also feature reader contributions in their journalism, such as “Reader’s recipe”. This has a positive impact on the brand, and highlights how The Times’ values its readers.

What you should steal from The Times’ model

• Make use of reader comments to fuel journalism
• Consider strategies that help readers feel part of your brand and connected to journalists
• Use polls, quiz’s and Q&As to establish 2-way interaction

Dive deeper into The Times’ strategy

• Developing community beyond commenting, with The Telegraph and The Times

5. Other publisher relationship-building strategies of note

• The Globe & Mail’s live Q&As with journalists, call-outs and reader-led content
• The Economist’s Substack experiment: “Off the charts” is a newsletter on Substack, designed to engage new audiences who are already on this platform
• Digital Spy’s forums

• WIRED’s subscription re-launch, which now focuses heavily on community-building, in particular with their exclusive, subscriber-only newsletters, each with a writer at the forefront

• Handelsblatt Circles: lessons on community from Chief Growth Officer Jan Kleibrink
• Village Media have launched “Spaces” their own chatting platform, for users to connect with others based on topics of interest or joining in on conversations

> Daily Maverick built a database of contactable readers and their expertise

> The Guardian US meets underrepresented communities where they are

And the article you HAVE to read if you’re moving towards community-building: Why the most valuable newsroom KPI is no longer reach but belonging

The post Steal this strategy: examples of publishers building relationships with readers (and how to replicate them) appeared first on Audiencers.

Max Moné is co-founder and CEO at Poool, the dynamic journey builder to boost subscription conversion, engagement, and loyalty.

This is the last episode in a 6-part series where I share what I learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. 
> Episode one: 100 subscription business, 15 industries, 1 moodboard
> Episode two: What’s free, what’s paid, and why it’s really an engagement trade-off
> Episode three: Why the best subscription businesses don’t try to sell on day 1
> Episode four: The subscription pricing page we've all built at least once
> Episode five: The first 100 days: why most of what we call retention is really just micro-conversions (again)

Why we’re ending with this

Over the past five episodes, we’ve gone deep into how the best subscription businesses do things to scale, using examples from the NYT, Spotify, Figma, L’Équipe, Jeune Afrique, and many others.

This last episode is different. It’s the one where we show you the weird stuff from our moodboard. The examples that made us smile, made us think, and sometimes made us wonder “wait, people actually subscribe to that?”

The answer is yes. People subscribe to pretty much anything and everything. And no matter how bizarre the product, the same principles from the previous five episodes keep showing up.

So here’s a tour of some of our favorites, organized not by industry but by what makes each one compelling for the person who’s paying. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it always comes back to: why would someone pay for this, every month, and not cancel?

“I feel good about buying this”: when the value prop is identity

Who Gives a Crap: £45.5M in UK revenue alone in 2024, over 1M subscribers globally, and over £10M donated to charities since launch. For toilet paper.

It’s toilet paper. There’s not much you can do to make toilet paper exciting. But they donate 50% of profits to sanitation charities, they have a brand identity that genuinely makes you smile, and their packaging is designed to be posted on Instagram (which, for a product you use in the bathroom, is quite the branding achievement).

The result: you don’t just buy Who Gives a Crap, you become a Who Gives a Crap customer and participate in something that is bigger than you (or at least you think you do). It’s an identity statement. You probably mention it at dinner parties (I mean, the name alone guarantees that). And that emotional connection is what makes people stay, because cancelling doesn’t just mean switching brands, it means giving up a small part of how you see yourself.

We Are Here does something similar with coffee: personalized beans, your choice of grind and delivery frequency, a custom sticker on the bag, and a donation to a different charity depending on which sticker you choose. It’s a coffee subscription that makes you feel like you’re expressing your personality every time you order.

This raises two questions that I think are worth thinking about for media:

First, are there publishers with a brand identity/voice so strong that people subscribe for what it represents, not just for the content? I can think of a few, and they’re not necessarily the biggest ones. Mediabask (you probably don’t know them) is an interesting example: people bought subscriptions before the website even launched, because of what the brand stands for and the community around it.

Second, could this become a model for media? Buy a subscription, and X% of the price (or profits) goes to a charity. Maybe subscribers even get to vote each month on which cause receives the donation. Green Got, a French bank, does exactly this with banking. Why not with a news subscription?

“I don’t have to think about it anymore”: when the value prop is friction removal

Dollar Shave Club doesn’t really sell razors, it sells the fact that you never have to think about buying razors again. And HelloFresh doesn’t sell meals, it sells the fact that you don’t have to decide what to eat or go grocery shopping.

What surprised me when building the moodboard is that even companies you wouldn’t expect are doing really sophisticated subscription work. Walmart+ and Instacart+ are grocery delivery services, but they have trials adapted to usage patterns, bundles to create lock-in effects (Walmart+ with Paramount+ and Burger King; Instacart+ with Peacock and NYT Cooking for annual members), and upsell paths that follow the exact same micro-conversion logic we described in episodes 3 through 5.

For media, the question this raises is not really about content. It’s about the experience around the content. What does a media subscription simplify in someone’s daily routine? The friction of hitting paywalls? The 30 minutes of browsing to find something worth reading? A curated morning briefing that replaces scanning 5 different sources? I think we could try build our subscription product that way as medias: what does our subscription remove from someone’s day?

“I discover things I’d never find on my own”: when the value prop is surprise

TokyoTreat sends you Japanese snacks, Kube sends you books, Le Petit Ballon sends you wine. Different products, same model: the value proposition is discovery itself.

You receive things you would never have chosen on your own, and the engagement comes from the anticipation and trust you build with the curator over time. The lock-in isn’t in the product (you could order Japanese snacks online anytime), it’s in the relationship with someone who knows your taste.

FindMyPast takes discovery in a completely different direction: you pay for access to billions of genealogy records, and every answer you find generates new questions. You discover a great-grandmother, now you want to know her parents. You find a marriage certificate, now you want the newspaper from that week. The product creates its own engagement loop naturally.

It’s the same mechanism that makes Spotify’s Discover Weekly so sticky, but applied to family history and physical goods. For publishers with decades of archives, there’s something genuinely worth exploring here: how do you turn a static archive into a discovery-driven experience that keeps subscribers curious and engaged?

“This product gets smarter the more I use it”: when the value prop is personalization over time

Strava is an app for runners and cyclists that tracks your activities, shows your routes, and lets you compare with friends. The more you run, the more valuable the app becomes, because your entire history, your segments, your social connections, your training patterns are all there. Switching to another app means starting from zero.

It’s the same personalization lock-in as Spotify (episodes 4 and 5), applied to physical activity.

Claude (the one helping me write this series, full transparency) and ChatGPT push this even further with a model that barely existed a few years ago: a base subscription with tiers, plus usage-based pricing on top. The more you use the product, the more you pay, but also the more value you get.

Two things about AI subscriptions that I think are worth watching closely for media:

First, they all let you try the product for free almost immediately, because the product is powerful enough that the fastest path to conversion is to just let you use it (everything starts with engagement). Which is exactly the registration-as-the-first-micro-conversion logic we described in episode 3.

Second, hybrid pricing (fixed subscription tier + usage-based layer) is interesting as a concept. Imagine a media subscription with a base access fee, and a premium layer that adapts based on how much you consume or which features you use. It doesn’t really exist yet in media (as far as I know), but given how fast AI pricing models are spreading to other industries, it might not be far off.

Yes, even cars

SIXT+: a car subscription from $679/month. You pick a car category, a location, a pickup date. You subscribe monthly, cancel anytime, maintenance and roadside assistance included. You can even switch to a different vehicle or pause through the app.

I’m mentioning this one not because the model applies directly to media, but because it shows just how far the subscription model has spread. And even here, the same principles show up: try before you commit (24-hour notice), one clear offer per category, flexibility to upgrade or downgrade over time (micro-conversions, again), and the value proposition is friction removal (no ownership, no maintenance, cancel anytime).

What the toilet paper confirmed (love this title)

Over six episodes, I’ve talked about the NYT’s dynamic meter, Figma’s onboarding, L’Équipe’s first-100-days data, Jeune Afrique’s dynamic pricing, Spotify’s personalization, and now toilet paper and car subscriptions.

If I had to summarize everything in one statement, it would be this:

The subscription businesses that will thrive (media included) are the ones that combine a strong brand identity, a clear value proposition, and an obsession with user engagement with an infinite loop of micro-conversions.

This is true for media. It’s true for every subscription business. Because the moment you charge someone on a recurring basis, you need to keep earning their attention every single month. There’s no way around it.

Engagement drives everything: better conversion rates, better retention, higher lifetime value, better advertising revenue. We saw it in the data from the best performers, and … we saw it in toilet paper, and coffee, and cars (it’s the last episode, let me enjoy it)!

And maybe the most practical takeaway from the entire moodboard: some of the best ideas for your subscription business will come from industries that have nothing to do with yours. A coffee company, a fitness app, a toilet paper brand. The principles are the same. The execution is just different enough to spark something new.

What we’re building to make all of this possible

If you’ve read all six episodes (thank you, seriously), you’ve probably noticed that orchestrating all of these micro-conversions, from anonymous visitor to loyal subscriber, across every touchpoint, is complex work. Registration flows, onboarding sequences, dynamic paywalls, personalized offers, engagement actions, anti-churn triggers, cancellation optimization. Across web, app, and print.

That’s exactly why we’re building the solution with Poool and Darwin CX: the end-to-end subscription platform to master each of these micro-conversions, at every step of the journey. Everything we’ve described in this series, from episode 1 to episode 6, is what our platform is designed to help publishers execute.

If that resonates, or if you’re currently thinking about your subscription platform, let’s talk.

If you have questions, disagreements, or examples that contradict what we saw, we’re genuinely interested. This has been a conversation, not a lecture.

And if you’d like to see the full analysis, you can download the complete Subscription Masterclass presentation (Link here).

PS: yes that’s actually a “book a meeting link”

The post Toilet paper, wine, cars, and what they teach us about subscription: episode 6 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 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.

The post Fewer articles, more value: Le Nouvel Obs’ transformation to reconnect with its readers appeared first on Audiencers.

Broadsheet, Australia’s leading cultural publisher, is embarking on a bold new chapter. Founded 16 years ago, the brand has become synonymous with the best in food, drink, fashion, and design across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Now, they’re taking their successful model to London whilst also moving towards a reader revenue strategy.

We sat down with Nick Shelton, Founder & Publisher of Broadsheet, and Ross Wilmot, Director of Reader Revenue, to discuss their international expansion strategy and the development of a subscription revenue stream, layered on top of their advertising model.

A consistent lens for diverse markets

For Broadsheet, the move from Australia to London is built on a repeatable editorial framework. Nick Shelton describes Broadsheet’s core product not as a list of recommendations, but as a specific lens that can be applied to any global city.

“The way we think about Broadsheet editorially is that it’s a framework,” Nick explains. “What you see through that lens differs depending on the city, but the values of the lens itself – quality, celebration, and curation – remain constant.”

Rather than relying on local intuition alone, Broadsheet uses this framework to solve a universal problem for urban audiences: the paradox of choice. By applying the same rigorous standards in London that they do across Australia, they maintain brand integrity while respecting local nuances. This city-agnostic strategy allows the brand to:

• Curate rather than catalog: Instead of exhaustive listings, they use a highly curated approach where they “don’t write about things we don’t like.”
• Prioritize the premium enthusiast: By maintaining high editorial standards, they attract a specific high-value audience cohort regardless of geography.
• Operationalize local reporting: By treating London as just another “market” within a proven system, they can scale quickly without reinventing their brand identity.

“We learned this lesson in Australia long ago,” Nick notes. “Sydney and Melbourne are fundamentally different markets with different behaviors. Going into London wasn’t about having expectations of what the city would look like; it was about reporting on it through that consistent, high-definition lens.”

Engagement: the common thread between ads and subscriptions

One of the biggest challenges in the publishing industry today is the perceived conflict between advertising and subscription revenue. Broadsheet, however, sees these models as complementary, with engagement being the common thread. 

“We’re not a traffic-based model, we don’t sell programmatic advertising. It’s not about more people equals more money; it’s about the depth of engagement. And we’ve long had the muscle and mindset in the business of engagement. The better engaged the audience, the better we do as a business, something that applies across both advertising and subscription revenue goals.” 

In short: by focusing on engagement, everybody wins. 

Ross, Director of Reader Revenue at Broadsheet, who recently joined Broadsheet after working at a legacy media publication, explained that by moving even a small subset of their flyby audience into a medium-engaged cohort, they see an exponential increase in page views, the currency of traditional commercial models. This approach is useful for showing teams the clear benefit of engagement to the advertising side of the business while simultaneously building a base for subscriptions.

Whilst they measure a collection of engagement metrics, focused very much on quality over scale, frequency is their most important, north star metric. 

The five pillars of a successful subscription strategy

Broadsheet’s transition to reader revenue is built on five key pillars, as outlined by Ross:

• An audience-centric approach: A laser focus on the most engaged readers, understanding their motivations, pain points, and what adds value to their lives.
• Compelling value proposition: Ensuring the subscription product addresses the needs of engaged readers. Initial research at Broadsheet showed that their readers would be prepared to pay for high-quality content, but that it needed to be combined with unique experiences like exhibition tickets, and perks like free coffee as well as tools to help them curate their Broadsheet experience.
• Cross-departmental alliance: Moving beyond a traditional marketing-led view of subscriptions to ensure buy-in across the entire business, from editorial to product, data, and CRM. At Broadsheet, they already had established ‘Squads’ associated to 90-day, one-year and three-year goals, so when moving to subscription, a new audience monetization squad was formed.
• Culture of test and learn: Continuous experimentation with subscriber journeys, funnels, pricing, and offers to drive sustainable growth.
• End-to-end lifecycle marketing: Delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, supported by a robust data infrastructure and access to the right platforms.

“There are of course many other aspects to consider, but in my opinion, these 5 are the ones that move the dial the furthest”

Building a value exchange through registration

A crucial component of Broadsheet’s reader revenue model is the registration wall. Launched in Australia in December 2025, a few months before their subscription model, the registration wall has already outperformed industry benchmarks: 

Specifically, a conversion rate (% of unique visitors who encountered the reg wall and converted) of 5.5% on the registration wall, compared to the industry benchmark of 3-5%.

“Registration serves us on several different levels,” Ross says. “It gives us the ability to communicate more directly with our most engaged audience, gather insights into their needs, and personalize their experience. And of course, it helps us reduce the reliance on third party platforms for our audience, which is going to be more and more crucial.”

Crucially, the registration wall introduces a clear value exchange on the site. “Previously, people were completely free to browse the site as they wished,” Ross explains. “The registration wall helps set the tone for the eventual introduction of a paywall, ensuring it’s not a shock when certain content becomes paid.”

Registration has also built confidence internally ahead of their paywall launch

“The insights from our research proved that there was definitely an appetite to pay as long as it’s the right proposition and that a subscription adds significant value to an individual’s life. And that’s where we’ve been focused on these three aspects of the subscription proposition, the content being the inspiration, the experiential side of things, and the utility aspects as well, pulling all those different ingredients together.”

Nick added that, ultimately, the team believed in the strength of their brand. 

“We’ve been running this for 16 years. We know we have a strong brand. We know we create a product worth paying for. So let’s do it. Having a reg wall in place was valuable for validating our assumptions on conversion rates through the steps in the funnel. We exceeded every single one of those assumptions. Of course, more people provide data for registration than handing over a credit card, but we consistently exceeded benchmarks since the launch, so we didn’t feel we needed to wait around for subscription. We just had to go for it, with confidence.”

London: building a cultural footprint, Australia: Broadsheet digital subscription

Currently, Broadsheet’s London operation is focused on audience acquisition and brand awareness. Before switching on monetization features, they are busy establishing themselves as the ultimate London city guide.

While London is about growth, Australia is the testing ground for the brand’s most ambitious move yet: Broadsheet digital subscription. Launched just days ago (April 2026), this membership program represents the official transition from a free-to-read model to a premium value exchange.

Ross highlights that early data from Australia has been “very strong,” already exceeding industry benchmarks for conversion. The model isn’t just about a hard paywall but rather an integrated experience:

• Exclusive experiences: Members get early access to ‘Readers’ Preview’ dinners at the city’s hottest new restaurants
• Perks and rewards: The program includes ‘The Vault’ (high-value giveaways) and daily rewards like free coffee or discounts at local partners
• Journalism access: Unlimited access to Broadsheet’s trusted journalism for A$1/week

The current content access model is a static meter, where audiences have access to a set number of articles per month before being asked to register and then subscribe, but the goal is to move towards a dynamic model adapted to a reader’s level of engagement via Poool.

What’s next?

Of course, the launch is just the beginning! Ross shared that the team is already focusing on:

• Identifying optimisation opportunities that exist within their key conversion journeys and subscription checkout funnel
• Leveraging those insights to inform a cross-departmental working group focused on CRO, building a roadmap of experimentation and executing
• Introducing new forums to share actionable insights with editorial: what content is driving conversion (last click and participation) and engagement to inform content and commissioning strategy; identifying opportunities to potentially convert a higher proportion of readers below the superfan engagement cohort 
• Building CRM muscle through talent acquisition and data engineering: unlocking capabilities within their Customer Engagement Platform (Braze) and Customer Orchestration Platform (Poool) to become more personalised and dynamic across owned channels 
• Building further value into the subscription proposition through product development of utility tools

The post From Melbourne to London: how Broadsheet is scaling culture and reader revenue appeared first on Audiencers.

FIPP's latest data shows a digital subscription market growing 24.7% and concentrating fast. The winners are bundling, embedding, and reducing their dependence on search. The losers are still renting their audiences from Google.

Nine international publishers, Le Monde, El País, The Irish Times, Politiken, Corriere della Sera and De Standaard among them, now sell subscription bundles that include access to The New York Times alongside their own journalism, according to Nieman Lab. The arrangement suits both sides. Local publishers add internationally recognised reporting to their value proposition without the cost of producing it. The New York Times Company extends its subscriber reach into markets where direct acquisition is slower and more expensive.

One of those nine publishers, De Standaard, sit inside Mediahuis, whose “essential subscription” is the clearest worked example of the strategy. As I wrote for Audiencers, Mediahuis has built a bundle that wraps journalism, e-books, masterclasses, a hiking and cycling app, and access to The New York Times into a single subscription. The early data is compelling: activated users churn 26.5% less, and the bundle is engineered to push subscribers up from the basic tier to a premium one priced at roughly double. The New York Times partnership is one component of that bundle, not a curiosity bolted on top.

That arrangement is the clearest signal of where the market is heading. FIPP’s latest Subscription Report counts 53 million digital-only subscriptions across 206 titles, and the headline 24.7% growth conceals a sharp split. Publishers that have built direct audience relationships, bundled product ecosystems and cross-title access are accelerating. Those still dependent on single-title subscriptions and search-driven acquisition are losing ground, in some cases losing subscribers outright.

The rapid expansion of AI into search has sharpened the divide. Referral traffic that publishers relied on for audience acquisition and advertising revenue is compressing. Publishers that were renting their audiences from Google are finding the lease harder to renew. The response from the strongest performers is consistent: own the relationship, deepen the product, reduce dependence on external distribution.

No company illustrates that logic more clearly than the New York Times Company, which is why the cross-publisher bundles matter: they are central to the strategy, not a side experiment.

The New York Times is no longer just competing. It’s embedding

The New York Times Company now reports 12.21 million digital-only subscribers and stopped reporting title-level numbers this year. The second decision reframes what kind of business the company believes it is in. The New York Times is no longer a newspaper with digital products attached. It is a subscription business that happens to include a newspaper, alongside Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, bundled into a single proposition designed to make cancellation feel like losing several things at once.

The cross-publisher bundles extend the same logic outward. As AI search compresses referral traffic, the value of a subscription with multiple compelling reasons to stay increases. Bundles reduce churn inside a single portfolio. Cross-publisher bundles spread that logic across the whole market and position the New York Times Company as the connective tissue of other publishers’ subscription strategies, not just its own.

The Nordics settled this argument years ago

While publishers in the US and UK are still debating the merits of bundling, Norway’s Amedia has been running the experiment since 2020, and the results are stark.

Its +Alt bundle, which gives subscribers access to all 127 of Amedia’s local newspapers plus a sports streaming service, now has 433,000 digital-only subscribers. Churn on the bundle runs at 0.7%. Churn for a single-title subscription is 16.4%. That difference translates into a subscriber lifetime value that is 26 times higher for the bundled product.

Norway, as a subscription market, grew 55.56% in the period, a function of a deliberate structural choice. Publishers there decided early that local relevance and shared digital infrastructure were not in tension; they were complementary.

In Sweden, Bonnier News reached the same conclusion. Its +Allt bundle, combining national titles (Dagens Nyheter, Expressen), more than 40 local newspapers and magazine content into a single subscription, reached nearly 500,000 digital subscribers by the end of 2025, up from around 270,000 in mid-2024. Including print subscribers with bundled access, total reach is over 1.1 million.

Germany and France are also moving. Germany’s subscription market grew 35.83% in the period, the fastest of any major European market. France grew 31.21%. Both reflect the same underlying pattern: publishers deepening their product propositions and reducing their exposure to external distribution.

The UK is following. FIPP’s data shows the market up 22.61%, with Newsquest, DC Thomson and Mail+ among the standout performers on percentage growth. Mail+ grew 177.8% in the period, from a low base, but the direction is clear.

AI search didn’t break the business model. It revealed which models were already broken

The useful question is not whether AI search hurts publishers. It is which publishers. The FIPP data, read against recent industry reporting, makes the divide specific.

The content most exposed to AI overviews is the content most easily summarised in a sentence: car specifications, factual service journalism, commodity news. Bauer Media Group has said as much directly. When the overview answers the question, the click never happens, and the publisher’s role in the value chain ends with the model’s training set.

The content least exposed is reporting that does not compress. Analysis, investigation, distinctive voice, and depth all convey information that survives summarisation, because the value lies in the framing rather than the facts. The Telegraph’s SEO director has described search as being in “managed decline” rather than collapse, on the grounds that subscribers return for reporting summaries that cannot be replicated elsewhere. The framing fits the data.

The more interesting signal sits in the other direction. The Washington Post reports that readers arriving via large language models spend longer on the site and convert to subscriptions at higher rates than traditional search visitors. The volumes are small, but conversion quality matters: AI search may be filtering out low-intent traffic that inflated publisher metrics without ever converting into subscribers.

As Colin Nagy argued recently in Monocle, AI hasn’t created a new problem for publishing; it has clarified an old one. Publishers built around search traffic were never really building audiences; they were borrowing them, and the loan is now being called in. The publishers losing ground are not victims of a new technology. They are tenants whose landlord has changed the terms.

US local publishers are paying it

Lee Enterprises reported that its digital subscriber base fell from 728,000 in March 2025 to 609,000 by December: a loss of 119,000 in nine months. The USA Today Co, formerly Gannett, saw a 26% decline year-on-year, dropping from 1.95 million subscribers to 1.45 million.

Both companies attribute the declines to deliberate strategies focused on price optimisation and improving average revenue per user. That may be true. It also describes companies managing contraction rather than building growth.

The sharpest contrast sits within the same corporate structure. Newsquest, the USA Today Co’s UK division, grew digital subscribers 35% year-on-year to 139,000 over the same period. Same parent company, opposite trajectory.

What the winners have in common

Bloomberg grew subscription revenue 10% in 2025, taking paying subscribers beyond 707,000. It now produces 800 hours of video each month. Subscriber-only newsletters grew 20% year-on-year. Podcast downloads rose 26%. The pattern is consistent: more reasons to open the product, more often.

Substack, with five million paying subscribers, has built its growth engine around internal recommendations that move readers between newsletters inside the platform. It is less a publishing platform than a subscription marketplace, one that reduces its dependence on external traffic by creating its own internal referral economy.

Immediate Media, with 767,000 digital app subscriptions now accounting for 64% of group subscriptions, is using AI to identify which audiences are most likely to subscribe and when engagement signals are strongest. The objective is habitual use and longer subscriber lifetime value.

The thread connecting all of them is the same one running through the Nordic data, the NYT bundle strategy, and the divergence between US and European local publishers. Subscriptions built on borrowed traffic are fragile in ways that subscriptions built on daily habit, multiple products and direct relationships are not.

Growth in the market is concentrating around publishers who solved for retention before they needed to.

The post The New York Times is becoming subscription infrastructure for other publishers appeared first on Audiencers.

Hi, I'm Lennart Schneider, Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy.

When I talk to newsletter creators, it usually doesn't take long before one of two questions comes up:

1) What actually constitutes a good open rate?

2) My newsletter has an open rate of 40%. That's great, isn't it?

The honest answer is: There is no such thing as a "good" open rate, and the open rate really says nothing about the quality of your newsletter. 

In this article, I want to clear up this misconception and explain when you should still pay attention to it.

P.S. I've written a book! The playbook for successful subscription models: With growth strategies and best practices from 50 leading companies. You can pre-order here (or on Amazon).

Why open rate says nothing about the quality of your newsletter

I completely understand the need for benchmarking and comparability. With newsletters, you have relatively few metrics, so you try to draw as many conclusions as possible from what you do have. Often, however, you draw more conclusions than are actually useful.

Let’s start with the basics: open rate is a fraction. You calculate it by dividing the number of unique opens by the total number of recipients. So far, so simple.

However, this leads to a small detail that is often overlooked. You can increase the open rate in two ways: more openers, or fewer recipients.

The latter point is often overlooked, but it’s crucial. People who don’t open your newsletter are often the same ones. And especially with older mailing lists, you often have a large proportion of inactive subscribers who have lost all interest.

So, if you have a 50% open rate with 10,000 recipients, then there are probably several thousand among them who haven’t opened a single email in six months. Let’s say there are 3,000 of them. If you remove them from the mailing list, your open rate immediately jumps from 50% to 71.4% (5,000 opens/7,000 active recipients).

Has this improved the quality of your newsletter? Are your readers more satisfied? No!

Has the quality of your distribution system improved as a result? Absolutely!

Why would you delete valuable leads?

Admittedly, I’ve recommended this to many newsletter creators, but the enthusiasm is usually lukewarm. They’ve put a lot of money and effort into acquiring these subscribers, so why would they just delete the addresses? Perhaps the reach is even important for advertising sales (even if nobody sees the ads).

But here are a few reasons why it’s worth it:

1. If someone hasn’t opened your emails for a long time, the likelihood of them returning is relatively low
2. You increase the risk of being perceived as spam
3. Depending on the newsletter tool and contract, costs increase as you send more emails
4. Your brand suffers when customers perceive you as pushy
5. Your advertisers are surprised when clicks fail to materialize on a supposedly large distribution list, and become suspicious
6. …

Many of the world’s leading newsletters therefore place great importance on the quality of their mailing lists and remove users after a long period of inactivity. The New York Times even discloses this quite transparently:

How can I find out who is inactive?

Good question! And not so easy to answer. Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, it’s often difficult to track who actually opens an email – Apple automatically opens emails before they reach the recipient, and therefore your email program thinks these users are active. Other users block tracking and are registered as inactive, even though they enthusiastically read every issue. So if you’re unsure: just ask the users.

Clicks can be tracked more reliably than opens, and if readers don’t click after (repeated) requests, you can remove them from the mailing list with a clear conscience.

Do I really need to delete them?

No. You can also pause them for now, or reduce the frequency. A good example is the sports newsletter “The Gist”. They temporarily pause inactive subscribers, and then when a major event is coming up (for example, the Olympics), they try to reactivate them.

However, you shouldn’t overdo it. If you haven’t contacted them for 1.5 years, you should continue to refrain from doing so. After that time, their consent to contact them also expires.

Even more reasons why open rate is misunderstood

Your open rate depends on numerous factors, and the quality of your content is just one of them. Here’s a (likely incomplete) list of factors that affect open rates:

Mailbox display:

• Subject lines (Do they encourage clicks?)
• Pre-header (Do you tease the content well?)
• Sender’s name (Do they trust you and look forward to your emails?)
• Sender images (Will they stand out in the inbox? Only works with certain clients)

The quality of your distribution:

• Cleanup of inactive users (Are non-openers regularly removed?)
• Segmentation (Do you always send emails to the entire mailing list or do you select recipients based on interests?)
• Preference Center (Can users configure which emails they receive and how frequently?)
• Age of the addresses (How long ago did someone sign up?)
• Lead campaigns/address origin (On which channels and with which promises were the users acquired? Did they want the newsletter, or did they just share their email to participate in a competition, for example?)

Deliverability

• Advertising tab in Gmail (Are emails from Gmail classified as advertising and not delivered to the main mailbox?)
• Spam (Do the emails often end up in the spam folder?)
• Bounces (Can the emails not be delivered? What are the different types of bounces, hard and soft?)
• Image sizes (are the images too large?)
• Email size (Will the email be truncated, for example, by Gmail, which happens from 102 kb upwards?)
• Shipping time (Is the shipping time chosen?)

Contents

• Good quality & relevance
• Diversity (do you cover different needs so that every issue contains an “aha” moment?)
• Continuity & predictability (Do readers know what to expect and why each issue is worthwhile?)

Technology

• Email tool or measurement technology (each mailing tool measures opens slightly differently, which affects the KPIs)
• Tracking Opt Out (Have users disabled tracking of clicks and opens?)
• Auto Opens on iOS (Are open rates inflated because emails are automatically opened due to privacy settings?)

So I can ignore the open rate?

Not quite. Since we don’t have many metrics, it’s still a valuable signal, as long as you’re aware of what it tells you, and what it doesn’t.

What you shouldn’t do is compare your absolute open rate with competitors who use completely different tools and whose lead generation works differently. This apples-to-oranges comparison is completely pointless.

What you can do instead:

• Observe long-term trends: Is my own open rate constant? Have there been any sudden changes I should understand? (But keep in mind that these changes could be due to technical reasons, e.g., more users with tracking protection.)
• Optimize your open rate with A/B testing: e.g., send each email with 3 different subject lines to a sample group beforehand and send the best version to the rest of the distribution list.
• Examine outliers: Were there any particular issues that were opened more or less frequently than average? What can I learn from them?
• Re-contacting those who didn’t open the email: Some companies send a newsletter a second time if it wasn’t opened the first time. I find it a bit spammy, but it seems to work.
• Use net reach (recipients x open rate) as the basis for advertising deals: This is fair to your advertising clients and you can also justify why the CPM (cost per thousand contacts) is higher if you are contacting a cleaned distribution list.
• Comparing segments: When running different lead generation campaigns, you shouldn’t just focus on the short-term cost per lead (CPL), but also consider whether the campaigns generate active recipients in the long run. A sweepstakes often generates a large number of addresses cheaply, but the open rate drops significantly after just a few campaigns.
  For better comparability, you can calculate a cost per lead after, for example, 10 campaigns. If you generate 1,000 leads per campaign for €1,000 in each of two campaigns, the short-term CPL is €1. If, after 10 campaigns, 70% of the leads in campaign A are still active, while only 30% remain active in campaign B, you get a clear picture: In campaign A, an active lead cost €1.43, while in campaign B it cost €3.33.
• …

PS: My newsletter has an open rate of 51-58%. That’s great, isn’t it?…

PPS: To hear more from me about subscription and newsletters, sign up to my own newsletter, Subscribe Now, here

This article was originally published in German on the Subscribe Now website, translated and republished with permission.

The post Why I don’t care about your newsletter open rates appeared first on Audiencers.

The line between subscription and membership is blurring, but that doesn’t mean membership is just subscription with a different name.

Subscription is a transaction. Membership is a relationship.

It’s the difference between “Pay to access content” and “Support something you care about, and be part of it”

To help you build a successful membership model, this article shares 4 publisher case studies, with strategies to steal from each. One of these publishers, The Guardian, would likely say they have a supporter model over membership, but the strategies built around conversion are very membership-like, meaning there’s still plenty to take away from their success.

1. The Guardian: turning readers into supporters

The Guardian’s journalism is free to access for everyone. But even without a paywall, over 1 million readers support them on a recurring basis.

What’s working

Although there are some concrete benefits to supporting The Guardian (such as exclusive newsletters, less ads and access to their app), supporters aren’t paying for access, they’re supporting and participating in The Guardian’s mission. It’s this emotional layer that’s paying off.

Messaging around gaining support is built around the 10 ‘supporter motivations’:

1. Editorial independence  
2. Protect the free press  
3. Investigative journalism  
4. Trustworthy, factual, high quality  
5. Holds power to account  
6. Open for all, no paywall  
7. International perspective 
8. Financial challenges in media  
9. Better understand world events  
10. It’s only fair to pay

These are then integrated into homepage banners, end-of-article ‘epics’ and emailing, where messaging is continuously tested, iterated and updated, often making use of current news events:

Every public-facing module is reviewed by an editorial eye to ensure the tone is a seamless extension of the journalism, not a jarring commercial break. This plays an important role in building relationships with readers.

In the US, this year-round messaging and UX testing helps to inform the team for their annual end-of-year campaign, running from early November, through Giving Tuesday and on to midnight on December 31st, the most critical window in their financial calendar.

In their most recent EOY campaign (2025), the final numbers were staggering: 

• Total raised: $3.1 million in liquid cash by Dec 31st (exceeding their $3M goal).
• Lifetime Value (LTV): The estimated total value of the campaign (including recurring commitments) is $8.6 million
• Year-on-year growth: This represents an 83% increase in campaign value compared to the 2023 “standard” year (because a presidential election year – as 2024 was – is usually an outlier).

What you should steal from The Guardian’s model

• Understand reader motivations for supporting or subscribing to you
• Continuously test messaging and offers, integrating supporter motivations
• Experiment with innovative ‘asks’, like The Guardian’s article count
• Bring the reader onboard with your mission, so they really see that their support is valuable to you

Dive deeper into The Guardian’s model

• The Guardian: reader revenue growth & proposition development
• Behind The Guardian’s record-breaking US End of Year campaign
• Relaunching The Guardian app: changing reader habits means we must also evolve

2. The Kyiv Independent: humanizing the newsroom

The Kyiv Independent is a young, English-language media, launched in a context of war, who has transformed from a 18-person startup into a globally recognized authority with over 27,000 paying members and 3 million monthly readers.

What’s working

The team has successfully built a mission-driven membership model with a community of supporters around a shared cause. Part of this success is thanks to building trust with their audience, something that is done between people, meaning they work hard to humanize their newsroom.

Instead of hiding behind a corporate brand, the Kyiv Independent puts its journalists at the center of its marketing:

• They don’t shy away from talking about themselves: their work, almost never say no to interviews, a lot of commentaries and opinion articles…
• Marketing communications are built around journalists and their personalities

• Membership is a community, not a transaction. It’s not a key to a locked door, but a way to keep information free for everyone
• Communication is always transparent, giving a glimpse into the behind the scenes and creating visible experts through personality-led journalism

However the team doesn’t shy away from campaigns asking for support. Countdowns to reach their target, birthday campaigns, country-specific campaigns… these have been a vital part of their growth strategy, creating urgency but with purpose and identity.

What you should steal from The Kyiv Independent’s model

• Be openly transparent on your funding, editorial choices, impact…
• Translate what you stand for, and what would be lost without you in messaging
• Bring the newsroom along with you, putting them front and center in marketing campaigns
• Build channels for journalists and readers to connect, whether that be through Q&As, reader-led articles or discord communities
• Ensure supporters are valued as individuals whilst also helping them feel part of something bigger

Dive deeper into The Kyiv Independent’s model

• How The Kyiv Independent is growing membership through relationship-building
• Inside The Kyiv Independent’s membership model

3. Condé Nast: building a premium membership layer

Condé Nast already had strong brands and a mature subscription model, but wanted to build belonging amongst their most loyal audiences. The team therefore created a ‘Membership’ tier that sits above subscription.

What’s working

This new membership layer represents a fundamental pivot from serving passive recipients to active participants. 

This clearly differentiates it from subscription.

Whilst their traditional subscription represents a scale/volume tier…

• Audience: Broadly focused on volume
• Value Exchange: One-way (passive recipient absorbing content)
• Goal: Volume and scale-based value – content for scale

…Membership is the niche, high-value tier

• Audience: Caters to a very specific segment of the audience.
• Value Exchange: Two-way. Members are active participants contributing data, feedback, and engagement. They expect to belong to a community.
• Goal: Engagement and high retention, not volume – content is focused on the funnel.

This focus on belonging is reflected in their metrics, measuring loyalty and engagement over volume. The most critical metrics include ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Renewal Rate, Recency (how recently they engaged), and Feature Engagement (which features are “stickiest”).

What should you steal from Condé Nast’s strategy?

• Don’t be scared of putting membership and subscriptions alongside each other, but make sure to clearly differentiate them
• Membership means moving beyond access to an elevated experience. For high-value tiers, Condé Nast commits to a white-glove treatment. This involves building dedicated membership teams trained to provide high-touch service. At industry events, these teams are equipped with “face sheets” to know members by name and be aware of their recent professional achievements, fostering genuine, human-to-human relationships instead of brand-to-consumer transactions.
• Measure membership differently – belonging and advocacy aren’t easy to define, but they definitely go beyond traditional engagement
• Segmentation matters: one size of subscription tier doesn’t fit all, and you’re potentially leaving money (and advocates) on the table by not creating a higher tier for them

Dive deeper into Condé Nast’s model

• When is a subscriber more than a subscriber? How Condé Nast is evolving its audience strategy with membership
• How Condé Nast is growing the “happy middle” of the audience funnel

4. Daily Maverick: involving members in journalism

The South African publisher, Daily Maverick, is an outstanding example of a successful membership model.

What’s working

One of their unique strategies that’s contributing to this success is a growing database of contactable “Insiders” (Daily Maverick members), providing expertise on every topic imaginable.

“You’re part of this community – it’s more than just a subscription and we need your help. We don’t know everything and there are experts amongst you. Be a part of Daily Maverick, share your expertise.”

Via a 3-step survey in the email onboarding series, Daily Maverick asked Insiders for their name, email address, phone number, job and other areas of expertise, their ‘superpower’ as it became known internally.

By sharing these details, an Insider could be contacted by the Daily Maverick team to participate in their journalism, provide expertise on a certain topic or even be invited to join a panel session at one of their events. 

It’s an impressive way of making a member feel like they’re directly supporting and involved in your journalism.

According to the reader revenue team, every newsroom should be looking for this sense of belonging, the feeling of being proud to be “a Daily Maverick reader”. And this “superpower” strategy, where community members are put at the centre of journalism, will help achieve exactly this, ensuring Insiders are a part of Daily Maverick.

What you should steal from Daily Maverick’s model

• Give readers opportunities to be involved in your work, whether than be through this form of database, commenting, debates or call-outs. Membership becomes real when people can do something, not just support something.
• Create direct channels between readers and journalists
• Build this into your value proposition – it’s a benefit for members, not just for your membership model

Dive deeper into Daily Maverick’s model

• Learning from Membership models: Daily Maverick’s superpower database
• Boosting membership conversion at Maverick Insider with FAQs

The post Steal this strategy: 4 membership models succeeding for publishers (and how to learn from them) appeared first on Audiencers.

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.

The post Amedia ignored older subscribers to attract younger ones appeared first on Audiencers.

Regula Marti helps media organizations navigate transformation at the intersection of editorial, product, technology, and business strategy.

In this article, Regula discusses how engagement isn’t a single metric to maximize — it reflects different reader needs and moments, where the same behavior can signal success or friction depending on context. She recommends moving beyond averages and article-level metrics to analyze engagement by audience segments and sessions, focusing on whether readers get what they came for and return.

Most publishers have more engagement data than ever — and still struggle to agree on what engagement actually means. The tools aren’t the problem. The problem is the assumption behind them.

The assumption is this: engagement is one thing, and more of it is better. But engagement isn’t one thing. It’s the outcome of different reader behaviors, driven by different motivations.

Same reader, different moments

Think about how you consume news. Some mornings you want a quick overview. Some evenings you want to go deep. Sometimes you’re browsing. Sometimes you want distraction.

These aren’t different readers. They’re the same reader in different situations, with different needs.

A short session can mean the reader got exactly what they needed. A long one can mean depth — or friction. High article counts can mean curiosity, or confusion. The same metric means something different depending on what the reader was trying to do. Without that context, you’re pattern-matching on behavior you don’t fully understand.

Who you’re actually looking at

Here’s a pattern that shows up consistently across publisher data: a small group of heavy users (20+ visits per month) drives a disproportionate share of pageviews. A large flyby majority (one visit per month or fewer) makes up most of the audience but a tiny fraction of consumption. Frontpage clicks illustrate this well: they overrepresent heavy users. Optimizing for clicks risks building a homepage for the audience you already have, not the one you’re trying to grow.

In between sit the loyal readers, visiting 2 to 20 times a month. They have a relationship with you but haven’t yet built a habit. They’re the most likely to convert and retain — and the easiest to overlook, because heavy users dominate the averages. The real movement happens here: turning flybys into returning readers, and loyals into heavys.

What a summary feature taught us

Product decisions show what happens when you measure at the wrong level.

When we introduced article summaries across our portfolio at Tamedia — short digests at the top to help readers decide whether to go deeper — the concern was obvious: readers would skim and leave. That’s partly what happened. Scroll depth dropped for some users.

But at session level, something else emerged. Those readers went on to read more articles per visit, and overall session time increased. The summary helped them get oriented quickly and navigate to what mattered for them more in this moment.

Other readers used it differently. After reading the summary, they were more likely to finish the full article. It gave them confidence it was worth their time.

Two opposite behaviors at article level. Both positive at session level. Both pointing to the same outcome: a need met, and a higher likelihood to return.

Segment awareness can also shape product design from the start. We kept our fast news format intentionally compact. Heavy users quickly find what they need, while the freed-up space showcases the differentiated content that loyals and flybys need to keep coming back.

What this means for how you measure

The answer isn’t a more sophisticated metric. You need to be more deliberate about what you measure and why.

Look at your segments separately in your analytics tool. The same metric tells a different story across them — and the average hides most of it. Track them over time: a single snapshot tells you little; the direction of travel tells you a lot.

Article-level metrics will often mislead you. A reader can leave early and still have had a successful session. That’s why session-level metrics matter — but only when read together with segment data. A daily digest designed for quick orientation will show low time-on-page. That’s not underperformance — it’s the format working as intended. The right metric is whether those users come back the next day.

Try this in your next team meeting

Start in your next team meeting. Pick one feature or format you’ve recently launched or are evaluating. Review its impact at article level, then at session level. Then ask: for which segment was this actually useful — and in which moment? A multi-format feature is a good example: a reader who skipped the article but listened to the audio version on their commute — possibly in a podcast app, invisible to your analytics — may well return the next morning. Low article engagement, high likelihood to come back.

You’ll often find that what looks like low engagement in one view is exactly what success looks like in another.

The reader who got what they came for is more likely to return. Design your metrics to capture that.

The post The reader who left your article early might be your most engaged user appeared first on Audiencers.