Mark Zohar, President and CEO of Viafoura, shares why he believes that Frequency (the F in RFV) is the most important metric to be tracking in an era where content is increasingly a commodity that AI can summarize, paraphrase, and serve without ever sending a click your way.

AI broke the funnel. Community rebuilds it.

The uncomfortable truth is that the open web’s traditional acquisition funnel, SEO at the top, content in the middle, monetization at the bottom, was always borrowed infrastructure. Publishers rented audience from platforms, and now those platforms are keeping the audience for themselves.

The publishers who will win the next decade are the ones who own the relationship, not rent it. And ownership doesn’t come from content alone anymore. Content is increasingly a commodity that AI can summarize, paraphrase, and serve without ever sending a click your way.

What AI cannot replicate is community. It cannot replicate the experience of debating a local election with your neighbors in a comment thread moderated by your newsroom. It cannot replicate a live Q&A with the reporter who broke the story. It cannot replicate the feeling of being recognized, replied to, and known by a brand you trust.

This is where Frequency lives.

The Frequency Loop

When publishers invest in community-building experiences like commenting, Live Q&As, topic-based chats, polls, personalized feeds, and real-time notifications, something powerful happens. Readers stop coming back for the content alone. They start coming back for the conversation.

That shift creates what I call the Frequency Loop

A reader visits for the content. They engage with the community. They get notified when someone replies, when a new live event starts, when a topic they care about is being discussed. They come back. They engage again. They register to keep participating. They subscribe to deepen the relationship. Every loop tightens the bond, increases the visit count, and unlocks more revenue per user.

The economics of this loop are not theoretical. Viafoura‘s data shows that engaged community members visit at a rate that is 6-8 times higher than fly-by users. And the downstream impact is well documented across the industry. Piano’s Subscription Performance Benchmark has found that registered users convert to paid subscriptions at roughly 45 times the rate of anonymous visitors. Frequency is what closes the gap between the two.

More frequency means more ad impressions. More frequency means higher page RPM, because engaged sessions monetize at premium rates. More frequency means a registered-user base that’s actually worth registering. More frequency means subscription offers that land, because the reader has already demonstrated, behaviourally, that they value what you do.

What the F should you actually do?

If Frequency is the metric, here’s the honest diagnostic every publisher should run:

Do you give your audience a reason to come back tomorrow that isn’t a new article? Do you have a place on your property where readers talk to each other and to your journalists? Do you notify them when their participation matters? Do you personalize what they see based on what they engage with, not just what they read? Do you treat your registered users like a community, or like a CRM list?

If the answer to most of those is no, you don’t have a Frequency problem. You have a community infrastructure problem. And in an AI era where every other lever (search traffic, social referral, content differentiation) is getting harder to pull, community infrastructure is the lever that’s getting more valuable, not less.

The bottom line

AI is going to keep getting better at answering questions. It’s not going to get better at being a community. That asymmetry is the single largest strategic opening publishers have right now, and Frequency is the metric that tells you whether you’re walking through it.

So the next time your board asks how you’re future-proofing the business against AI disruption, don’t show them a traffic chart. Show them your Frequency curve.

And if you don’t have one, well, you know what to ask yourself.

What the F are you doing?

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

Company card:

SWI swissinfo.ch is the international online service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC).

For many national broadcasters, the "international service" is often a secondary consideration. At SWI swissinfo.ch, it’s their core mission. Operating in 10 languages, ranging from the four Swiss national languages to English, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian, the platform serves as a bridge between Swiss perspectives and global conversations, with about 75% of audiences located abroad.

“Our content puts Switzerland in touch with the world and reaches people in all 195 countries recognised by the United Nations.

Thanks to our journalistic quality, our articles are referenced up to 80 times a week in 46 languages and serve as a reliable source not only for diplomatic services and journalists abroad.” - Swissinfo.ch

“We aim to be at the intersection of where Switzerland has an impact on global conversations,” says DeVore. “Whether it’s the pharma companies operating out of Basel, the diplomatic hub of Geneva, or the unique system of Swiss direct democracy, we look for touchpoints that resonate internationally.”

Adaptation over simple translation

One of the most striking aspects of the swissinfo.ch workflow is the move beyond literal translation. Instead, the team practices adaptation.

With small teams of roughly three people per language service, journalists must act as cultural mediators. “It’s not just translating from English to Chinese – you have to adapt for the context and the market. For example, how do you explain the Swiss Federal Council, a body that has no single president, to an audience in China? Our teams often have to invent lexicons and style guides to transmit these unique political concepts effectively.”

Deep engagement through debating

Moving away from a traditional broadcast model, swissinfo.ch has pivoted toward community building to bring these diverse audiences together. Five years ago, they launched a debate format to replace standard comment sections. 

Instead of readers commenting in their own language, often sharing information that didn’t really serve anyone’s needs (not to mention the necessity to moderate heavily), journalists now pose specific, theme-based questions seated in a theme currently being explored. 

To solve the problem of linguistic silos, they implemented auto-translation within threads, usually using Deepl but not only. The best tool/LLM is chosen per language depending on the feedback of the editors. This allows a reader in Brazil to engage in a conversation with a reader in Russia, both viewing the thread in their native language.

This focus on dialogue has led to long-running, nuanced discussions on high-stakes topics like Swiss neutrality, which DeVore notes has seen consistent engagement for over a year following the invasion of Ukraine.

“On some topics, we get really interesting, nuanced, and sometimes surprising threads going, for instance on things like Swiss neutrality. Of course, it’s a hallmark of Switzerland; people think of that quite quickly alongside cheese and chocolate and army knives when they think of the country, but what does it really mean in practice? Especially after the Ukraine war started. And this thread has had hundreds and hundreds, an evergreen comment section that’s been going for a year or more.”

Products for niche needs

SWI swissinfo.ch also develops bespoke products for specific audience segments. Of course, part of their niche is the Swiss connection, but at the same time they’re trying to fill gaps in people’s media needs in markets where accessibility isn’t exactly a given, or where content might be behind paywalls.

• The SWI Plus App: Tailored for the Swiss diaspora (over 800,000 citizens living abroad), allowing them to personalize their news feed across multiple languages

• The Russian Edition: Recognizing that their website is partially blocked in Russia, the team has leaned into video-based platforms like YouTube, producing long-form, one-on-one interviews (up to an hour) to provide in-depth context to Russian speakers
• ‘Truth or Tale’: A short-form video series focused on myth-busting common misconceptions about Switzerland, designed for social media discovery

Trust in the age of AI

As a publicly funded media outlet, trust is the currency swissinfo.ch relies on. DeVore highlights their involvement with a recent research cohort piloted by the US-based nonprofit  Trusting News, which helped them understand audience needs around AI transparency and develop “disclaimers” regarding the use of AI.

“We are a niche media with an international footprint, which makes it even more important to show people at a glance that we are trustworthy.” While the organization uses AI for translation assistance and other tasks to manage resource limitations, they maintain a strict “human-in-the-loop” policy to ensure cultural accuracy and editorial integrity.

> If you’re working on a similar strategy, you’ll also be interested in hearing about the business logic behind Le Monde in English

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

This article is the second in a 6-part series where Max shares what he learned from studying 100 subscription business models across 15+ industries. If you haven't read the first one yet, start here. 

And the other side of the coin is just as important: the DMR also showed a strong correlation between traffic on paid articles and the share of users who simply leave the site when hitting a paywall. The more you frustrate, the more people bounce. That’s not just a missed conversion. That’s a direct hit on engagement, on page views, ad revenue, and your ability to build any relationship with that user.

In the same year, Mather Economics published a study (part of a GNI LatAm Subscriptions Lab report) looking at paywall hits per user. Subscription probability follows a bell curve: up with each hit, peaks, then back down. Same conclusion, different data.

Then in 2022, the New York Times shared what brought all of this together (Audiencers analyzed it here). When they launched their paywall in 2011, the meter limit was the same for everyone: a fixed number of free articles, a regwall, some more articles, and finally a paywall.

Over the years, they developed the Dynamic Meter, a machine learning model that sets personalized meter limits per user.

The core insight: the model optimizes for two metrics simultaneously, engagement and conversion. And these two metrics have an inherent trade-off. More paywalls → more subscriptions, but less readership. They proved this with randomized control trials: as the meter limit goes up, engagement increases but conversion drops.

With a fixed approach, you’re forced to choose. Maximize engagement, or maximize conversion. Not both. There’s always a window of lost revenue that a single rule can’t capture. The Dynamic Meter expands that window by personalizing: more frustration for high-propensity users, more openness for low-propensity users.

None of this is new. DMR: 2021. Mather Economics: 2021. NYT: 2022. We’ve known this for years. And yet, the vast majority of publishers still use a uniform paywall for all users.

If you don’t personalize, you’re forced to make a choice between engagement and frustration. And that choice won’t be the right one for all users. That’s why more and more sophistication has developed. And the jump from “manual” to “1-2-1” isn’t binary. There’s a whole spectrum in between.

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The 6 levels of paywall sophistication

Being at level 1 doesn’t mean you’re behind. But it means there are probably missed opportunities. The question is whether these missed opportunities are big enough to justify the resources needed to reach the next step.

• Level 1: Fully manual

Free and paid decided by hand, article by article. An Atlas & Audiencers’ study confirmed this is still the norm: the decision is based on the article’s perceived value. Breaking news free, analysis behind the wall (to simplify it to its core).

• Level 2: Manual + automated rules. Paid content still decided manually, but rules modify access based on additional criteria.

Foreign Policy shared their approach on The Audiencers. They segment by publish date (under 7 days: hard-walled; older: standard meter), but also by cohort. Users with high search intent and churned subscribers are hard-walled (high subscription propensity). Social referrals see a registration wall with a free page view (low subscription propensity, but conversion on registration is 100x higher than on subscription). That registration data became their strongest conversion driver. No AI needed. Just smart segmentation.

• Level 3: Manual with override.

The base decision is manual, but the system can override contextually: closing a free article for a high-propensity user, opening a premium one for a segment you want to engage. A first step toward personalization without losing editorial control.

• Level 4: Manual + a third automated category.

Free and premium decided manually, but a “grey zone” is managed automatically based on user profile, device, or source. Ideal for publishers in transition between fully manual and more automation, while still giving the editorial team a great deal of control (yes, the business side gets some autonomy, but only on categories validated with editorial).

• Level 5: Fully automated for conversion and engagement.

The system decides everything: whether to show a wall, which type, what meter limit, per user. The engagement/frustration trade-off managed dynamically.

Business Insider does this with AI: reading habits, traffic source, content genre propensity. The algorithm decides: paywall, registration wall, or nothing.

The NYT does it with the Dynamic Meter (as we talked about earlier). It learns from first-party engagement data (no demographic or psychographic features), adjusts per user, and continuously runs randomized trials to improve. This is the model that expanded the opportunity window we described above (source).

• Level 6: Fully automated for conversion, engagement, AND advertising.

The decision also integrates ad revenue. Fortune’s CCO at the time, Selma Stern, explained that if a user’s subscription probability is too low (first-time visit, smartphone, social media), the paywall opens and the page view is monetized through ads. The goal is to maximize total user value, wherever it comes from (which I personally think is an amazing model for short term profitability – because yes, sometimes long-term profitability might require less revenue in the short-term).

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What you can take away from this (and test tomorrow)

Figure out which level you’re at. If all your users see the same paywall regardless of behavior, source, or profile: what are you missing?

Try one rule-based variation before thinking about AI. Foreign Policy’s 100x stat didn’t require machine learning. It required a hypothesis and a way to test it.

Start by looking at your bounce rate on paywalled content. If a significant share of users leave the site when they hit your paywall, that’s revenue you’re losing twice: no subscription AND no engagement. The DMR, Mather Economics, and NYT data all showed the same thing: a uniform paywall always forces a trade-off. Even a simple first step (like showing a registration wall instead of a paywall to low-propensity users) can start closing that gap. That’s what Poool makes it easy to test.

See you next week for Article 3, where we leave media and look at how the best subscription businesses across all industries think about conversion.

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PS: This article was about the decision logic (who sees a paywall, and when). We didn’t cover the blocking method: how the paywall is technically implemented, front-end or server-side, and what that means for content protection, AI scraping, and SEO. That’s a separate topic, and we covered it here: “Paywalls & SEO“. All 6 levels above work with all blocking methods.

The Next Gen News Report 2 (NGN2), a collaboration between FT Strategies, Medill Knight Lab, and the Google News Initiative, provides a roadmap for news organizations to reach younger audiences. The core of the report is the 7 Modes of Engagement, which distinguishes how "next gen" consumers (ages 18-25+) discover, consume, and share news.

 The vibe: passively encountering news whilst browsing social feeds
 The energy: engagement is often spontaneous and fleeting, shaped by the emerging news producers they follow and platform algorithms.
 The strategy: intentionally create content that feels native to the platform and find patterns that break through to capture fleeting attention in the few seconds before viewers scroll to the next post

Mode 2: Seek

 The vibe: actively looking for information on a specific event or topic
 The energy: a highly intentional mode of engagement, where consumers look for efficient, information-rich content that delivers depth and relevance without distraction
 The strategy: anticipate information needs and make depth accessible without friction, ensuring that credibility, clarity and efficiency guide every interaction.

How to win at Seek mode

• Guide discovery
• Deliver curated briefings
• Offer live formats that capitalize on immediate interest.
• Create seamless, intelligent discovery experiences (such as Ask FT or Ask The Post)
• Design intuitive interfaces within owned and operated platforms
• Provide high utility & control, such as personalization and tailored formats based on preferences, such as listening or watching

Case study: Particle News. Using AI, Particle gives readers the option of discplaying a news story in 6 different ways, including the 5 Ws, opposite takes on the same story or “Explain like I’m 5”

Mode 3: Subscribe

 The vibe: receiving news from trusted, curated sources (newsletters, podcasts, SMS) they have deliberately chosen
 The energy: people expect timely, important or novel updates from sources whose judgement they rely on and do not want to miss
 The strategy: timely, important or novel updates from reliable sources

How to win at Subscribe

• Sync with daily habits: design delivery around audience routines and preferences, not output cycle, and consider offering personalized delivery
• Make subscribe content dense and easy to complete
• Standardize the skeleton for instant scanning
• Keep it short, but provide options to go deeper

Case Study: The Edinburgh Minute. Short paragraphs, plain language, softer tone in the introduction. A long list of key stories, each with two sentences max, along with an emoji to introduce the topic, and a follow-up link.

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2. The “Consumption” Modes: how news is processed

In consumption modes, users have chosen to explore a subject, topic or piece of content more deeply.

Audiences are more likely to engage further when a story feels personally relevant, emotionally resonant or sparks their curiosity. How they first encounter that story does not dictate what happens next. Differing motivations shape how individuals choose to go deeper, whether by verifying facts, exploring context, or interpreting different perspectives.

The 2025 findings reinforce the three modes we previously identified that capture how audiences engage more deeply with the news once they move beyond sifting. These modes are:

Mode 4: Substantiate

 The vibe: verifying if a story is true or finding the "raw" facts.
 The energy: an individual has found a piece of information and wants to quickly and credibly confirm it
 The strategy: create content that is promptly delivered after a breaking news event, focusing on main claims and facts, with simple, clear and digestible evidence at its core

How to win at Substantiate mode:

• Meet your users where they are
• Prioritize accuracy and relevance over speed or volume
• Push information directly to audiences
• Lead with facts
• Create quick, easily digestible formats 
• Show your working: stitch primary source materials into the content and show the process

Case Study: UnderTheDeskNews. They often presents sources behind the presenter, such as maps of military facilities, to promote substantiation. These successful news producers clearly annotate from where information has come using overlays on videos or references in text, and they include links in captions and bios

Mode 5: Study

 The vibe: going deep to master a topic of personal or professional interest
 The energy: a desire to learn, upskill and be inspired. For some, Study mode is a pleasant distraction
 The strategy: producers can create long-form, information-dense content that has high-production value to keep engagement high, while showcasing their lived experience as a means to draw users into the story.

How to win at Study mode:

• Bring the story to life through immersion.
• Show interest
• Open with the motive, not just the topic
• Use mini-brands or shows as a creative sandbox
• Start with a learning goal to orient the audience and prime attention
• Favor evergreen or under-explored themes
• Build concepts progressively and go deep
• Bring it to life: gather original evidence, showcase it in original ways and develop a signature form

Case study: HowTown. 15-plus-minute long-form videos that have clear chapter markers and distill key information while allowing users to easily go back or skip specific sections.

Mode 6: sensemake

 The vibe: looking for context to understand why a story matters and what to think about it
 The energy: exploring different viewpoints to form opinions. This mode is driven by curiosity and a desire for co-learning spaces
 The strategy: create spaces that invite perspective and transparency, helping audiences process disagreement and find orientation amid uncertainty

How to win at Sensemake mode:

• Create open conversations 
• Create open spaces for honest conversation where producers and audiences can think aloud
• Clearly disclose your intention, bias or viewpoint
• Orient and include the audience: vary show formats to deepen engagement and reach audiences across information needs
• Use livestreams to transform news into a shared, real-time act
• Use satire wisely (it should stimulate critical thinking): build recurring inside jokes to make complex topics feel approachable and foster a sense of belonging

Case Study: Morning Brew. Always linking to the original business story to anchor it to one company and how it’s being covered. Satire is created through the use of props, funny captions and over-the-top personas or characters.

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3. The “Social” Mode: how news is shared

Mode 7: Socialize

 The vibe: sharing news to connect with others, express identity, or start a conversation. Sharing news is less a discrete consumption habit and more of a long-term relational action to be considered in its own context.
 The energy: there is no more valued, trusted source than friends and family, and often these connections help cut through content overwhelm.
 The strategy: build for sharing!

How to win the Social mode:

• Make sharing a “product feature” that makes the action effortless for readers
• Create content that people want to send to their peers
• Leading news producers tell human stories
• Consider using memes to condense meaning and inject humor

The takeaway for publishers

The “Next Gen” consumer is suffering from information overwhelm. To win, publishers must transition from being “content factories” to “mode-specific service providers.” Whether it’s winning the first two seconds of a Scroll or providing the deep-dive tools for Study, success in 2026 and beyond depends on meeting the audience exactly where they are.