As with other media organisations, the Guardian has been establishing ways to better understand reader behaviours and how they continue to evolve and change. A number of factors have changed how readers now consume news today, from the rise of AI chatbots and ‘click-less’ news, to the growing dominance of video-driven content on social media platforms like TikTok, as well as increasing levels of news fatigue and avoidance.
Changes in reader habits mean that we must also evolve.
Three quarters of the Guardian’s digital readers now access our journalism daily via mobile devices. Our premium news app, which prompts users to subscribe after reading a set number of articles, attracts one million daily users and has become the second biggest revenue driver for the Guardian. And while this model is working, growth relies on two things:
- Generating new installs and converting casual mobile web users into app users
- Increasing frequency and loyalty for existing users
To respond to this, in May 2025, we went to market with a relaunched Guardian News app, with new features and a major redesign. Here are the three main areas we improved on:
Discovery & Personalisation – Your News, Your Way
In an era of news overwhelm, it’s important to give users the ability to craft a feed of topics and stories they want to read quickly and easily without the need for endless scrolling. We learned that Guardian readers still love curation and are resistant to the notion of having an algorithmic feed.
In response, we created ‘My Guardian’ – a section of the app focused on personal curation, with a more intuitive set up experience. We made it easier to switch between topics, and changed the UI to make it more resemble a social media feed. We also redesigned our homepage to have more curated highlights, aiding discoverability and breadth and depth of reading.
It would’ve been easy to assume My Guardian was a way of avoiding news you don’t want to read – but we know from research that Guardian readers don’t want to live in echo chambers. So instead, our marketing focused on the choice and diversity of topics you can follow.
Audio experiences
Our data suggested two key bits of insight: our app is heavily used in the mornings, and our readers find it hard to consume long form journalism when life responsibilities are keeping their hands busy.
Now that podcasts are a well established form of media consumption, and data suggesting this is only rising, we brought generative voice to the app. Now every article can be listened to, not just read. And we introduced a new dedicated Audio tab, putting podcasts and longform reads front and centre, particularly valuable for morning users on the move.
Whilst text-to-voice and podcasts aren’t new to the industry, our goal was to provide accessibility and flexibility to how users consume journalism. We’ve had a 34% uplift in podcast listens, and we can now piggy back onto the podcast launch calendar – particularly useful for App Store promotion.
Upgrading Downtime
We know the news is overwhelming, and we wanted to provide readers with a reason to use our app in those moments of downtime that doesn’t involve news. That’s why we introduced the Puzzles hub.
The hub contains daily puzzles that readers can engage with in a fun and challenging activity, including crosswords, sudoku, Wordiply and Word wheel – with more to come in the very near future.
Suddenly, we have a completely new dimension to how we market the Guardian app, and target new audiences. We will be targeting a full Puzzles campaign later this year (more on this soon!). We’ve gone from thousands of page views to millions almost overnight and I’m very excited about the future from here.
For a Product Marketer, it’s important to remember 4 fundamental things with a go-to-market launch:
Work hand in glove with your product team. Join their meetings, learn their language, build those relationships and foundations. Essentially, become one team – believe in each other’s mission. It makes working together a breeze, and you understand the product from a different perspective.
Audience research is crucial to understanding the customer problem and solution – their pain points and gains, what makes them install and subscribe? Don’t make assumptions – getting into the minds of your users or readers is invaluable. It helps you develop your messaging and creative approach and stay true to the customer’s needs.
Have clear creative principles and goals but challenge yourself, too. We had fun leveraging our brand’s more playful assets (e.g. illustrations), avoided cliches in our creative work (like hands holding phones), and leveraging UI in our creative. Everyone’s approach will be different!
Translate your existing customer insight and product research into a value proposition and positioning framework that you can launch into market with – and build on over time as your product develops.
Shout out to Nazeerah Makda, Daniel Bhattacharya, Paul Heron and the entire Apps Experience team at the Guardian for an amazing launch.
