At the Audiencers’ Festival in London 2026, Patrick Rademacher, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Ringier Media Switzerland, shared how breaking down internal silos and calculating holistic Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is transforming their revenue model, and informing decision making across the entire organisation.
For the first time, the publisher has the hard data to prove that investing heavily in deep, direct user relationships is entirely worth the effort.
“One reader is not two different entities”
For a long time in the media industry, publishing teams have worked in silos. Users were treated as entirely separate entities depending on the department looking at them:
- The advertising side: Focused purely on maximising reach and ad impressions to drive advertising revenue.
- The reader revenue side: Focused on exclusivity and conversions to drive subscriptions.
This division creates a constant conflict: advertising teams demand more reach to scale ad revenues, while subscription teams countered by demanding more exclusivity to lock content behind paywalls.
However, in reality, one reader is not two different entities, it is one and the same person. A single user can generate both advertising and reader revenue simultaneously, meaning the perceived target conflict doesn’t actually exist.
What’s more, publishers have long suspected that registered audiences hold a significantly higher value than anonymous users. But without the concrete data to prove it, this debate remains stuck in opinion-based, gut-feeling discussions.
So, Patrick and the team set about establishing a holistic, comprehensive Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) that combines both revenue streams.
To break this down:
- Reader Revenue CLV is calculated by multiplying the Average Revenue Per User by the subscription lifetime.
- Advertising CLV is calculated by multiplying the Average Revenue Per User by the readership lifetime.
Measuring users on two dimensions
Testing this new metric out, the team started with Ringier’s digital-only, German-speaking reach brand in Switzerland, Blick.ch.
While the project started as a complex manual spreadsheet exercise, the team is currently working on automating the process directly within their data lake. Patrick emphasized that these preliminary results are meant to show “t-shirt sizes” (relative proportions) rather than precise, absolute financial figures, the main goal being to prove that the ads vs subs conflict doesn’t exist.
The Blick user base was analysed across 2 distinct dimensions: funnel depth and loyalty.
Dimension 1: Funnel Depth
Dimension 2: Loyalty
What the data revealed
1. Funnel depth unlocks LTV
The data clearly proved that moving a user deeper into the funnel unlocks exponential lifetime value. Preliminary results suggest:
- Giving consent increases the value 5x compared to “No Consent”.
- A logged-in user has a CLV 40x larger than a user who is “Consent Only”.
- Moving from a login to a monthly subscription increases value by another 2x, and a yearly subscription multiplies that by 5x.
2. Subscribed users still drive ad value
The results exploded the myth of the ads vs subs conflict: subscribed users continue to generate strong advertising value. When looking at monthly and yearly subscribers, their advertising value remains high because they are highly engaged with the platform.
This was also something shared by Bonnier Media at WAN-IFRA’s World Congress in Marseille: subscribers not only have a subscription ARPU of €300, but an advertising ARPU of €75.
3. The more loyal, the higher the LTV
When analysing the loyalty dimension, the lifetime value growth was even more staggering. A Brand Lover (visiting 3+ times a day) has an 80x higher total CLV than a casual or one-time reader.
The final monetisation matrix
When combining these dimensions into a heat map, the value disparity becomes clear. A casual No Consent reader sits at the bottom of the scale (indicative value of around CHF 1), whereas a registered Brand Lover with a yearly subscription climbs all the way to an indicative value of CHF 1,500. In short, a high CLV directly correlates with high loyalty and a deep funnel stage.
While the high-value buckets are incredibly lucrative, the core issue for Blick.ch, and most reach publishers, is that the vast majority of the audience currently sits in the “Consent Only” bucket, which yields relatively low monetisation per user.
Speaking on a panel about registration as a solution to this challenge, Patrick highlighted how this data provides a clear financial incentive to log audiences, guiding users deeper into the funnel.
However, Patrick clarified that registration isn’t a magic wand – the value does not come from the act of logging in itself. Rather, it comes from two secondary effects:
- Engagement: Logged-in users consume more page views, creating more ad impressions and higher ad revenue.
- Lifetime: Having a user’s email address establishes a direct relationship, reducing churn and making it far easier to eventually convert them into monthly or yearly subscribers.
Putting CLV into practice
To put these CLV insights into practice, Ringier Media Switzerland has shifted from just gating content to building features designed to deepen user relationships.
Because Blick.ch is well-known for its sports coverage, they launched a feature called “Follow My Team.” Sports fans can select and follow their favorite local clubs, national teams, or specific sports, creating a highly personalized feed and specialized team detail views. Of course though, if a user wants to save these preferences and access this tailored experience, they must register and log in.
By building a product that naturally incentivises identity over anonymity, they are successfully guiding casual users into the logged-in ecosystem.
Patrick highlights that understanding user value is becoming yet more critical with the rise of AI search and AI browsing modes. In an AI-driven ecosystem, publishers are most likely to lose the traffic of users with low loyalty who visit anonymously without a login or subscription. Building a walled garden of logged-in, loyal users is no longer just a revenue optimisation strategy, but a survival mechanism.
By aligning their teams and product strategy with a holistic Customer Lifetime Value, Ringier Media Switzerland doubled their number of daily logged-in users over the last year.
For the first time, the publisher has the hard data to prove that investing heavily in deep, direct user relationships is entirely worth the effort.
