Conde Nast | Audiencers

When is a subscriber more than a subscriber? How Condé Nast is evolving its audience strategy with membership

Madeleine White — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 11:03:41 +0000

On my recent trip to New York, Condé Nast shared how they’ve developed a multi-layered membership ecosystem designed to drive loyalty, connection and higher lifetime value. Of course, I was hooked. So I followed up with Director of Global Consumer Revenue, Holly Johnson, to find out more about this shift from a volume-based model towards deep engagement and loyalty.

Key takeaways to copy & share

> Condé Nast built a membership tier above subscription across brands including AD and Vogue Business. A member's lifetime value is up to 50 times a subscriber's, and they are 1.5 times more likely to stay

> The difference isn't price, it's direction. Subscription is one-way and built for volume, while membership is two-way, with members contributing data, feedback and engagement in exchange for belonging to something

> Timing does the selling. 35% of AD PRO acquisitions come from a post-purchase upsell shown immediately after someone buys a standard AD digital subscription

> The AD PRO Directory exists because editors kept being asked to recommend interior designers. Formalising that request became a $1,500-a-year product with 71% year-on-year revenue growth

> Member programming beat discounting outright, lifting marketing performance 70% against running discounted pricing. Staff carry face sheets at events so members are greeted by name and recent achievement

Catch up quickly:
- Condé Nast is one of the world's most renowned media companies covering a wide variety of genres, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, WIRED, GQ, Architectural Digest (AD), and more
- To build belonging amongst their most loyal audiences, the team have created a "Membership" tier that sits above subscription
- The value exchange here is two-way: Members are active participants contributing data, feedback, and engagement. They expect to belong to a community.
- This strategy is paying off: a member has an LTV (Lifetime Value) up to 50 times higher than a subscriber, amongst other benefits listed below

A holistic, inter-connected ecosystem

Condé Nast views its portfolio of brands not just as publications, but as Intellectual Properties (IPs). The fundamental strategic question guiding all development is: “Where does this brand have permission to play?”

The team aims to leverage the brand’s authority across the entire consumer lifecycle, tapping into different value exchanges (and thus revenue streams) to build an inter-connected eco-system. A consumer may start as a commerce customer, then event attendee, subscriber and eventually a member. This breadth not only builds a consumer’s affinity to the brand, but also ensures sustainability and flexibility in a challenging market.

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The power of puzzles: How The New Yorker approached a games paywall

Lindsay Ederheimer — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 09:24:46 +0000

Lindsay Ederheimer is Director, Consumer Revenue at The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Key takeaways to copy & share

> Games are a top-three category for engaged minutes at The New Yorker, averaging 25 minutes per user on crossword pages. Over half of players arrive directly, making the section unusually insulated from algorithm shifts

> Puzzles had been free since 2018. Rather than wall them outright, the team built a windowed hardgate: the last seven days free, everything older behind the paywall

> The window is a dial rather than a decision. It can tighten to three days or open to fourteen, and players still get five crosswords a week, so the paywall arrived without a shock

> Archive players self-select. Anyone hunting a puzzle from more than a week ago is already showing higher propensity to subscribe, which is why that is where the wall sits

> Games have their own paywall rules, separate from articles. People behave differently playing than reading, and it lets the team test games paywall copy without disturbing the site meter

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How Condé Nast is growing the “happy middle” of the audience funnel

Khalil A. Cassimally — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 07:48:46 +0000

We had the pleasure of hearing from Sarah Marshall, VP, Audience Strategy at Condé Nast, at The Audiencers’ Festival in London thanks to the invitation of our premium sponsor, WordPress VIP, the Open & Intelligent Experience Builder for modern enterprises.

Key takeaways to copy & share

> With search referrals declining, Condé Nast has stopped trying to widen the top of the funnel and started widening the middle. Sarah Marshall's image is an inverted trapezoid rather than an inverted triangle

> Every channel is assigned one job. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for awareness, search for acquisition, newsletters for engagement, and newsletters, homepages and apps for retention

> The site strategy is counterintuitive. Pop-ups and access walls barely convert new audiences and probably make them bounce, so Condé Nast declutters instead: content in the first viewport, few sticky elements, no pop-ups

> A subscriber-only WIRED webinar on getting the most from ChatGPT drew over a thousand subscribers, and 10% of them subscribed specifically in order to attend

> The test she applies is four fits: does the content serve the segment, does the channel suit the content, does the channel support the revenue model, and can that segment actually pay

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