This article summarizes the session given by Max Leroy, Audience & Product Strategist, formerly of The New York Times, CNN, and POLITICO, at The Audiencers' Festival in Paris on September 16th, 2025.

This session in 5 bullet points:

• The real danger to the media? Not AI or Google, but our disconnect from readers’ needs.
• Plummeting trust, dwindling audiences, refusal to pay: in any other industry, we would be talking about the collapse of product-market fit.
• Urgent action is needed: we must stop pointless obsessions and return to users’ needs.
• This series of articles presents five toxic obsessions and offers five useful obsessions for the sustainability of the media: short circuits, communities, respect for audience needs, experimentation, and advertising/UX balance.
• This first chapter covers obsession number one: exhausting ourselves by criticizing platforms.

What if the greatest threat to the media were neither AI, nor the “big bad wolf” Google, nor the decline in social traffic, not even the crisis in publishers’ business model? What if the real problem were us? Us and our persistent inability to take an interest in those we are supposed to serve: our readers.

The symptoms of this disconnect are measured each year by the Digital News Report and the figures for France are damning:

• Trust in free fall: Only 29% of French people still trust the media, compared to 39% 10 years ago. This score places us among the lowest in Europe, just ahead of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary
• An audience that shuns the news: More than a third of the population (36%) actively avoids the news, exhausted by information overload and paralyzed by information anxiety
• A value that is no longer perceived: Barely 11% of readers are willing to pay for online news

In any other industry, such a verdict would be final: the loss of product-market fit. The absolute priority would then be to stop everything and go back to talking to our users, understanding their pain points and needs, and reinventing our value proposition.

How did we get to the point where our product no longer meets an essential need of its audience?

Yet where do our eyes and conversations among media professionals turn? To the evolution of algorithms and the experiences of Google, Meta, X, and OpenAI, which are drying up our traffic sources. Or to the adoption of ad blockers and the end of third-party cookies, which are jeopardizing our advertising revenue… We are obsessed with other people’s products, those that impact our distribution. Meanwhile, a new generation of content creators is exploding, forging direct and authentic bonds of trust with their audience, something we no longer know how to do with ours.

Of course, the risks posed by platforms are real, and the political, legal, and economic battle to defend our value is necessary. But it must not become an excuse to paralyze what is essential: the work of our editorial, product, and marketing teams to urgently regain that product-market fit. We must focus our efforts on what we can control and accept the rest. Fear does not prevent danger.

Let’s dare to use a metaphor that’s not so far from reality. Imagine for a moment that traditional media are like historic car manufacturers, spending their days complaining about gas prices, CO2 emissions regulations, low-emission zones, or the end of combustion engines in 2035. Meanwhile, in a decade, electric cars have become more accessible and cycling in cities has made a strong comeback. Users have moved on: you don’t fight product-market fit, you pursue it.

It’s time to radically shift our obsessions. We need to abandon toxic topics over which we have limited influence and refocus on our main lever for action: our relationship with our current and potential audiences. In this series for The Audiencers, I invite you to explore five of these toxic obsessions that paralyze our teams. The hope is to replace them with five obsessions centered on the needs of our audiences and thus find our way back to product-market fit.

Toxic obsession 1/5 : Criticizing platforms

Our first toxic obsession is to waste time and energy denouncing platforms. We criticize their products, algorithms, and decisions, but let’s be clear: these companies are empires that write their own laws and have the means to listen to (almost) no one except Donald Trump, who supports them. Some executives even display a visceral, personal contempt for the press. Why, then, would they negotiate sincerely with us, when our dependence gives them all the leverage?

The fight for neighboring rights or against uncontrolled crawling is legitimate. But to wage it from a position of quasi-absolute digital vassalage is to condemn oneself to reaping only crumbs. The real leverage for negotiation lies neither in Brussels nor in the forums we sign, but in our direct relationship with our audience. To start a serious conversation with Google, it would be wise not to depend on its services (Search, News, Discover). For many media outlets in France, Google accounts for more than 50% of traffic, and in some cases more than 85%.

Faced with changes to their products—AI Overviews in particular—our instinct is to want to slow things down and demand guarantees. This ignores the reality of their market. Google is not on a crusade against the press; Google is fighting for its own survival in the face of the massive adoption of LLM chatbots as response engines by users. Google’s goal is to stay in the game by responding to this new need. In this battle of titans, we are neither their ally nor their enemy; we are simply the battlefield.

To replace this trait: Grow our audiences through short supply chains

Our obsession with platforms keeps us in a reactive, sterile, and exhausting position. Since the balance of power is stacked against us on their turf, the only viable strategic response is to change the playing field.

Rather than fighting to optimize increasingly precarious traffic, we must devote our resources to building short circuits with our audiences. It’s up to us to transform volatile, algorithm-dependent readers into a loyal and engaged audience that we can activate ourselves. This approach makes our newsletters, apps, events, and communities the main tools of our resilience strategy to resume negotiations from a better position.

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This article summarizes the session given by Fabien Mulot, Marketing Director at L’Équipe, at The Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on September 16, 2025.

> After the acquisition spike from the Paris 2024 Olympics, L'Équipe built 12 retention projects around four lifecycle moments: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention and re-subscription, each with its own indicator

> The number that drove everything: every additional paid article read in the first three days cuts month-one churn by five points. Onboarding now pushes new subscribers to read two

> That onboarding loop shows what the subscription includes, prompts personalisation through alerts, newsletters and favourites, then serves paid content matched to those stated interests

> The cancellation form was rebuilt through A/B testing. Adding a summary screen and showing personalised discounts both improved retention

> An RFV engagement score adapted to L'Équipe guides every decision, with a strategic threshold of 100. Two-thirds of subscribers sit above it

How can subscribers be retained once the Olympic Games are over? For L’Équipe, the challenge is immense: transforming the momentum of a global event into lasting loyalty. Fabien Mulot shared the methods implemented in 2025, which he summarized as “12 projects” organized around four stages in subscribers lifecycle: onboarding, stimulating usage, retention, and re-subscription:

Each stage has been assigned its own performance indicator:

1. Onboarding: the crucial first 3 days

Data analysis showed a strong correlation between immediate consumption and retention. Reading at least two paid articles within the first three days significantly reduces churn M+1.

This is the core of L’Équipe’s new onboarding strategy: a web and app loop that showcases the benefits of subscription, encourages users to personalize their experience (alerts, newsletters, favorites), and then prompts them to immediately read paid content tailored to their interests.

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This article summarises the session given by Mathias Douchet, Chief Product Officer at The Telegraph, during the Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on 16th September 2025. The slides from his presentation can be downloaded at the end of the article.

> The Telegraph puts around 90% of its product resources into the mobile app, with teams built around it. App usage is now the single most predictive indicator of subscriber retention

> That displaced what they used to prioritise. Multi-channel engagement and newsletter signups were the signals they watched before, and app usage beats both

> The numbers behind it: app users have eight more sessions a week than web users, and 30-day retention is six percentage points higher. App usage grew 15% in a year

> Access is light freemium: the home screen and a few articles open, the rest for subscribers, with a 14-day trial for new app users in exchange for an email. It converts better than a standard paywall

> The catch they are open about is that people drop off when the trial ends unless the follow-up is well orchestrated, so activation after day 14 is the live problem

Founded in 1855, The Telegraph is one of the UK’s leading news outlets, with 30 million monthly readers across its website, app and print editions, and over a million subscribers.

The product culture is long-standing and well-established, with the ability to make clear and decisive decisions about subscriptions and the reader experience.

The mobile app: a flagship product

In 2022, The Telegraph merged its two apps: the first was a digital version of the newspaper – highly regarded but little used; the second was a live feed version – more widely distributed but not very popular.

The current app is the result of 3-4 years of work, with engaging additional features such as games, news feeds, discoveries and newsletters.

The Telegraph app in a few words: 
-> Freemium model: a selection of free articles, the rest is reserved for subscribers
-> A 14-day free trial is offered to new app users
-> App usage has increased by 15% in a year
-> 8 more sessions each week vs web
-> 6 percentage points higher 30-day retention vs web

Of all the projects tested in recent years, not everything has worked, and that’s key to the approach: test quickly, keep what works, and discard the rest.

The access model is simple: light freemium. The home screen and a few articles are visible to everyone, while the rest is reserved for subscribers. To compensate for the significant amount of closed content, new app users are offered a 14-day trial, available via email. This allows for data collection and has proved more valuable to conversion rates than a standard paywall. The downside however is that users may drop out after 14 days if the follow-up is not well orchestrated, hence the ongoing work on activation and retention after the trial.

The app significantly out-performs web

Mobile app users have eight more sessions per week than web users and show six more subscription retention points at 30 days.

App usage is becoming the most predictive indicator of retention, ahead of other signals that were previously considered priorities, such as multi-channel engagement and newsletter subscriptions. This justifies the strategic refocusing and budget shift.

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This article summarizes Télérama’s session at the Audiencers’ Festival in Paris on September 16th, 2025. On stage: Fleur Lavedan, Chair of the Executive Board, Annabelle Bizard, Digital Marketing Director, and Tom Alexandre, Product Director.

> Télérama built a streaming guide from an asset it already had: 20,000 reviews written by 145 journalists, France's largest cultural newsroom, repackaged around the question of what to watch tonight

> The insight driving it was that editorial alone doesn't create a daily habit. Without a service layer telling you where a film is actually streaming, readers have no reason to come back every evening

> They combined rather than chose. Two prototypes were tested, an editorially curated hot-to-cold list and a single daily recommendation, and the launched product uses both

> The archive is joined to third-party availability data from Plurimedia and JustWatch, with every entry linking back to a Télérama review, so automation carries the service and journalists carry the judgement

> One month after launch: 3,360 new subscribers, a conversion rate 20 times the usual, and monthly visits up 6%

At Télérama, product innovation only makes sense if it serves the magazine’s founding ambition: to inspire a love of culture and guide curious minds through a world that has become increasingly rich and diverse.

Faced with the explosion of streaming platforms, the editorial team wanted to address a universal frustration: spending evenings searching for something to watch rather than actually watching. Their response: a “Platform” guide, designed as a digital extension of the TV schedule.

Télérama has a rare asset: more than 20,000 reviews of films, series, and documentaries produced by 145 journalists, the largest cultural editorial team in France. But to transform this heritage into a digital format, it was necessary to go beyond a simple editorial reorganization.

The Platform project was born out of the conviction that without a service dimension, it would be impossible to create a daily reflex among readers.

So it all started with… a drawing:

The product team tested several approaches, including a “hot-lukewarm-cold” system based on the logic of editorial lists…

….and a minimalist version focused on a single daily recommendation:

The end result combines both: a mix of edited content and automation, enriched by service data provided by Plurimedia and JustWatch, with a systematic link to a Télérama review:

The launch was treated as a genuine digital statement. Massive app installation campaigns, open days, support from Le Monde Group publications, synchronization with the brand campaign… everything was aligned.

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Anthony Capon is Product Director for RMC and BFM’s digital platforms. Here, he discusses a landmark project launched in March 2024: the in-house development of a vertical video feed on their platforms. The format was designed to address three key challenges facing the group: increasing user engagement, attracting a younger audience, and creating new monetization opportunities.

> BFM built a TikTok-style vertical video feed inside its own apps and site rather than only posting to the platforms. Eighteen months on it averages 2.5 million views a month

> The engagement number is the interesting one. Each time someone opens the feed they watch seven to ten videos, which is exactly the behaviour they were trying to import

> The hard part was never the content. Their 16:9 player couldn't handle smooth vertical scrolling, and video preloading, essential on 4G or patchy coverage, was the most complex piece to solve

> Monetisation was designed in from day one rather than added later. Ads are preloaded too, on the same logic as the videos, so an ad never breaks the scroll

> The whole thing ran on a five-person pilot team with one person per discipline: product, engineering, editorial, ad tech and marketing, meeting weekly with clear decision rights

For BFM, one of France’s most popular news brands and platforms, video is a strategic asset, a source of expertise and a competitive advantage. And it’s all the more important in an ecosystem where the current challenge is to engage and retain our audiences on our own platforms.

So, it seemed obvious to us that we needed to develop this content, in all its forms, depending on news cycles, audiences, and consumption environments.

On our BFM platforms, we felt that there was a need for a format that could boost engagement, attract a younger audience, and serve our business strategy.

Vertical video was the obvious choice:

• It has a history with us, as we launched BFMTV’s live video in vertical format a few years ago
• It’s already a very important product for BFM, feeding into heavy usage among our most active audiences on social media (particularly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube)
• It’s a good branding lever for our editorial teams and brands, not to mention an opportunity for monetization through advertising

But between the idea discussed in a meeting with the editorial team and the moment you scroll through your first feed in the app…

Let’s just say Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Reproducing the addictive scroll: behind the scenes of creating vertical video in-house

For the Product & Tech teams, our starting point was pretty simple: how could we replicate the swiping motion we all use on Instagram or TikTok on our own player, with our constraints, our content, and our UX?

Before writing a single line of code, we launched a quick but effective discovery phase (a nod to ProductROI enthusiasts) because we knew where we were going.

The goal: beyond the extensive benchmarking (particularly among our US counterparts), we asked ourselves how we could understand the mechanics of vertical formats that capture so much attention—and how we could adapt them to our editorial and technical context.

Of course, we also added analyses of current video usage on our formats (themes and video formats that work, completion rates on our Live or VOD video formats, average session duration on video formats, etc.).

This phase allowed us to quickly identify what “hooks” our users: smooth scrolling, instant video playback, and the absence of functional friction.

From there, we moved on to defining and validating the user flow, followed by the initial designs.

Alongside these UX/UI advances, we still had the most complicated task ahead of us: the player…

On the development side, it was quite a challenge

Our video player, originally designed for 16:9 use, was clearly not ready to handle fast, smooth, frictionless vertical scrolling. We had to open up the hood and work on a few key developments: video preloading (critical for the experience, especially on 4G or in gray areas), transitions between videos, native gestures, etc.

Preloading was particularly complex, and our developers had to be resourceful to achieve a truly seamless experience. And all this with our player – it isn’t the most flexible to use, but it does carry a lot of useful things, such as analytics, advertising, etc.

The result: a real feat by our in-house tech team, who managed to get this new format running smoothly on both the web and the app, despite all the constraints (particularly those of iOS and Android). A major QA phase followed to ensure that the format worked across contexts—from old Android devices to recent iPhones—without glitches or lag.

Behind the feed: our routine for producing, editing and publishing daily

Once the feed was in place, we still had to aliment it. And not just a little!

Curating videos for the feed looks like this:

• Vertical videos are edited in Adobe Premiere or “cut” from BFM’s vertical live feed (available in the BFM app, on the “DIRECT VIDEO” page).
• They are then titled, tagged, and sent via Wildmoka…

• They are then sent to our in-house CMS, Cléo (as well as social media platforms) so that our editorial teams can edit, prioritize, and adjust the timing of publication.

The whole thing is based on a “hot” curation approach: the day’s news, key programme formats, more “cold” content with a step back from current events…

“Think of ROI from day 1”: what we put in place to monetize without degrading the experience

One of the things we did well was to integrate monetization from the outset, working with all stakeholders and keeping the same vision in mind: to develop and control the architecture and technical/advertising structure of our products in-house.

Today, the feed can accommodate:

• Sponsored formats (native editorials or branded capsules),
• Customized OPS,
• More “traditional” video monetization formats (currently being rolled out on the web and apps).

We’ve implemented a system of rules defined jointly with our advertising agency and managed on the publisher side: frequency of appearance, maximum duration, display context..

Above all, we incorporated the same logic as for videos: preloading ads to avoid latency and not “break” the user’s scroll. It’s not 100% perfect, but we’re getting close.

The result: a new offering with potential and, we hope, great KPIs for our advertising network, with ad formats that are neatly integrated and don’t affect the user experience.

18 months later: what we learnt

This offer was launched in March 2024, and we are very pleased with the figures and usage achieved.

Here are a few highlights:

• On average, the vertical feed generates 2.5 million video views per month
• Each time the vertical feed is initialized, an average of 7 to 10 videos are viewed
• Time spent is steadily increasing, which also meets business objectives

But we know we can go even further…

• Developing our “go to market” strategy: working on raising awareness and understanding of this new offering among our users, particularly in-app (currently too discreet, the vertical video slider is located in the middle of the home page)

• Working with our editorial teams on curation and editorial content, which in the future could take the form of “original capsules,” thematic collections, or other formats, as we have seen from our American colleagues (notably at the Washington Post and CNN during the US elections)
• Extending this more broadly to other brands within the group, as the potential is significant: the vertical player is already available on our BFM Business, RMC, and RMC Sport websites and apps, but the offering still needs to be structured

Our method for aligning product, tech and editorial

Beyond KPIs, it was the alignment of product, tech, editorial, and business from the outset that made the difference. Here’s how we approached it in terms of organization:

• A small pilot team (five people) with one representative per profession: PM, lead developer, lead editor, business sponsor (AdTech), and a marketing profile (on measurement and marketing of the offer)
• Clear rituals: structured weekly meetings (progress, obstacles, trade-offs, approvals), + parallel workshops on business expertise (Product Discovery, UX/UI Design, Editorial, Monetization, etc.)
• Shared management:
  • The PM framed the roadmap, challenges, and coordination
  • The tech lead was involved from the design stage to make the right tech choices to address other issues
  • The editorial team worked on the relevance of the selection of videos available in the feed and ensured the quality, responsiveness, and agility of the back-end tools for curation and editorialization
  • The business team provided commercial insights and monetization challenges on the tech side (visibility KPIs, ad UX, etc.)

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How can you set a price that reflects the value of your product AND is acceptable to your readers? This was the topic of a brilliant panel at the World News Media Congress 2025 organized by WAN-IFRA in Krakow. Three experts shared their very concrete strategies for increasing revenue while maintaining subscriber satisfaction: Flavia Barbosa Ferreira (Head of Retention at Le Monde), Mariah Craddick (Executive Director, Product at The Atlantic), and Danuta Bregula (Director of Paid Products at Axel Springer Poland).

> Le Monde, The Atlantic and Onet all describe a price-last approach: fix the offer, the perceived value and the user experience first, and only then move the price

> Le Monde built account-sharing detection first, which let it sell duo, family and B2B tiers confidently. It then tested a rise on 10,000 subscribers: plus one euro retained better than plus two

> The Atlantic sits below competitors on price yet above them on retention, over 70%, and growth. Subscribers who complete its on-site onboarding retain four points better than those who don't

> The Atlantic sorts subscriber benefits into essentials, utilities and bonuses, a taxonomy worth stealing. It measures whether they land by tracking key actions taken in a subscriber's first seven days

> Onet Premium bundles more than fifteen Polish brands, from Newsweek to National Geographic, behind one subscription. Between 2019 and 2024 revenue grew 91% a year on average and churn fell 32%

Le Monde: increase price but with ‘finesse’

With 665,000 paying subscribers, Le Monde is the leading French-language daily. Half of its revenue comes from subscriptions (35% digital, 15% print), making pricing optimization a direct lever for profitability.

Flavia Barbosa Ferreira is Director of Retention at Le Monde. Last year, her team conducted a series of experiments to increase prices without harming profitability or reader trust.

The situation before 2020

At the start of the project, Le Monde’s digital subscription offer was €1 for the first month, then €9.90/month for the first year.

This offer made it possible to acquire a significant number of subscribers…

…but failed to retain them in the long term as the price rose to €13 per month in the second year, then to €17.90 in the third.

A new set of offers (after 2020)

Thanks to the development of an internal fraud detection system called “Capping” — which blocks users who are simultaneously trying to access to articles from multiple devices using the same account, i.e. account sharing — Le Monde was able to confidently promote multi-account subscriptions (B2C and B2B)….

This has led to an increase in “duo” and “family” subscriptions, which are sold at higher prices.

Next step: price increase

The Le Monde team conducted an A/B test of a price increase on 10,000 subscribers, who were divided into two groups: +$1/month and +$2/month. An informational email was sent in December for an increase to be applied in January.

The results were analyzed the following March:

“Following this test, we observed slightly better retention with the €1 per month increase compared to the €2 increase. Out of caution, and given that this was the first price adjustment under the new pricing structure, we chose to start with the €1 monthly increase, which was considered less risky—while still generating a significant increase in revenue. For certain cohorts with lower initial prices, we opted for increases greater than $1, based on the findings of this initial test.”

What Le Monde took away from it

Their ARPU has been growing steadily since 2020, and the presentation of subscription offers has been optimized for greater clarity and conversion.

Rather than starting with price, Le Monde begins by improving the offering, perceived value, user experience, and fraud prevention. Only then do they adjust the price. This is a deliberate “price-last” approach.

The Atlantic: make the value tangible for subscribers

With prices set at $79.99/year (digital), $89.99/year (print + digital), and $120/year (premium ad-free), The Atlantic is below its competitors in terms of price, but above average in terms of retention and growth: +15% subscribers YoY, and a retention rate of over 70%.

Mariah Craddick divides subscriber benefits into three categories:

• Essentials: unlimited access, newsletters, mobile app, narrated articles, digital issues.
• Utilities: article saving, sharing, reading mode, app customization.
• Bonuses: subscriber-only podcasts, games, live events, merchandise.

They measure value through:

• the percentage of new subscribers who performed a key action within the first seven days.
• the proportion of subscribers with “engaged” or “core” status.
• a retention rate that is four points higher among those who completed on-site onboarding.
• Articles narrated via 11 Labs, the article sharing feature, and the premium mobile experience (particularly on iPad) are key differentiators.

One of the secrets of their success? On-site onboarding.

Subscribers who complete the onboarding process on The Atlantic website retain 4 points more than those who do not!

Onet Premium: the most daring bundle in Europe

In Poland, Ringier Axel Springer launched Onet Premium, a bundled subscription giving access to more than 15 major brands (Onet, Poland’s leading news site, Newsweek, Forbes, Politico, Business Insider, National Geographic, and others). Together, these brands reach 22 million Polish users every month.

The offer includes:

• exclusive items from several brands.
• 150 episodes of exclusive podcasts per month.
• 30,000 audio articles per month.
• an average listening time of 67 minutes and 10 hours per month per user in the audio app.
• cross-promotional newsletters, subscriber events, and editorial formats shared between brands.

To achieve this, they created a unified identity driven by editorial consistency and cross-brand storytelling, proving the value of the bundle through its impact beyond each individual brand and building a community around the power of critical thinking.

As a result, between 2019 and 2024, they achieved rapid growth:

• +91% average annual revenue growth;

• -32% churn rate;
• +15% share of highly engaged subscribers;
• +58% revenue growth between 2023 and 2024.

Key takeaway: To prove the value of the bundle and move from a “price-first” to a “price-last” model, the value proposition must be consistent, clear, accessible, and obvious to the user.

The post Pricing strategies from The Atlantic, Le Monde and Onet appeared first on Audiencers.

Since taking over as CEO of Groupe Le Monde in 2010, Louis Dreyfus has pursued a clear ambition: proving that high-quality journalism can be economically sustainable — primarily through digital subscriptions. At the World News Media Congress 2025 hosted by WAN-IFRA, he shared a series of concrete editorial, tech and marketing decisions that have powered the group’s consistent growth.

> Le Monde went from losing 10 million euros a year in 2010 to 25 million in EBITDA. The first lever was hiring: 310 journalists then, 560 now, an 80% increase

> Growth came from widening the editorial mission rather than narrowing it. New sections on intimacy, housing and parenting, 36 journalists on Africa, and a weekly magazine now supplying a quarter of ad revenue

> Some accounts were shared by more than 5,000 people. Rather than block them, Le Monde built prompts that upsell heavy sharers into duo and family plans, and now sells the tool to other publishers

> Le Monde in English runs on seven staff, translating 40 articles a day, and already delivers half of all new international subscribers. The US, UK and Canada lead

> ARPU stands at 11.84 euros a month, and the group expects digital revenue alone to cover the entire newsroom cost within two years. More subscribers means more journalism

1. Expanding editorial mission to broaden audience

Over the past 15 years, Le Monde has significantly widened its editorial scope to cover underreported topics and attract new readerships — without lowering its standards.

Key developments include:

• Thematic supplements on feminism, sexuality, climate, and the launch of public events (Le Festival du Monde)
• The launch of weekly magazine M 14 years ago, modeled after the New York Times Magazine, leading to an immediate +30% boost in traffic at launch, now accounting for 25% of advertising revenue

Le Monde also developed new editorial verticals:

• The “Intimités” section, created in 2023, exploring intimacy, housing, parenting — highly popular with readers

• A major investment in African coverage, now with 36 dedicated journalists

2. Heavily investing in the newsroom

One of the group’s key moves: hiring.

From 310 journalists in 2010 to 560 today — a +80% increase in just over a decade.

“You can’t produce great journalism without journalists.”

The ambition: offer exclusive, in-depth, international content that justifies subscription value.

3. Winning over young audiences on social platforms

Le Monde made a clear bet: meet under-18s where they already are — Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

The result: native video formats led by young, identifiable journalists, with a clear, educational tone.

→ These short formats act as a gateway to subscriptions

→ Young audiences later return via desktop or the app, with strong retention potential

4. Investing in 3 distinct app products

Le Monde now offers:

• A PDF replica app (faithful to the print edition)
• A “Le Monde” app publishing more than 100 articles per day, 7 days a week
• A Tinder-like news discovery product (“La Matinale”) that delivers a curated daily briefing, with a selection of 21 articles

The goal: match mobile-first habits and improve retention through tailored experiences.

5. Subscriptions: growth, profitability and the end of the deficit

Key 2024 metrics:

• +10% digital subscription growth, +8% all kind of subs
• Average ARPU (monthly revenue per subscriber): €11.84

• Within 2 years, digital revenues alone will cover the entire newsroom costs

“We’ve entered a virtuous cycle where more subscribers = more resources to produce journalism.”

6. Fighting password sharing — and turning it into revenue

When the team found that some accounts were being used by over 5,000 people (!), Le Monde launched an upsell strategy inspired by Netflix — using an in-house tech tool called Capping:

• Pop-ups triggered by suspicious simultaneous usage
• Automated upsell to duo or family plans

→ Thousands of subscribers upgraded to more profitable plans

→ Le Monde is now offering Capping to other publishers

7. A fast-growing international edition

Two years ago, Le Monde launched Le Monde in English:

• 40 articles translated daily by native English-speaking editors and journalists
• A dedicated newsletter
• 7 full-time staff members

Results:

• 50% of new international subscribers now come from this edition
• Top countries: US, UK, Canada

→ Translations are now handled by OpenAI instead of DeepL or human translators, with only light editing by in-house journalists — lowering costs significantly.

Key numbers to remember

• In 2010, Le Monde was losing €10M per year
• In 2024, it will generate €25M in EBITDA

The post From €10M in losses to €25M in EBITDA: How Le Monde built a sustainable model appeared first on Audiencers.

Le Figaro has pulled off a tour de force: halving the time it takes to take out a subscription, from 50 to 25 seconds. Behind this substantial improvement lies a mammoth project dubbed “AMEX” (“Amélioration de l’Expérience Utilisateur” – Improving the User Experience), launched four years ago to internalize and modernize the entire subscription conversion process. We spoke to Valentin Jubert, Director of Digital Subscriptions, and Benjamin Lupu, Product Manager, Reader and Subscriber Experience.

> Le Figaro halved the time it takes to subscribe, from 50 seconds to 25, and lifted conversion from 0.7% to 0.9%. It took four years and around 100 people

> Subscription management had been outsourced to the print provider. Marketing waited weeks to launch each new offer. It now takes a few hours, which is the real return on the project

> Product, tech and marketing built it together with the CEO reviewing weekly. As one lead puts it, nobody was simply a customer of another team, they designed the tool for themselves

> The least-quoted result is the best one. Training a new call centre agent used to take three weeks, and three months to reach full competence. On the unified interface it takes two days

> Migration allows no do-overs, so they ran three rehearsals and checked every subscriber and invoice. Their one regret is bringing customer service and accounting flows into the project too late

A structured project driven by an in-house culture

The AMEX project was born in 2021 from a clear desire on the part of Le Figaro to modernize and control its subscription infrastructure.

In figures, AMEX means :

• 2 years of preparation
• 2 years of implementation
• 100 people from Le Figaro team

Historically, subscription management was entirely outsourced to GLI with Le Figaro’s Loggia tool, the print service provider. Not sufficiently adapted to digital needs, Le Figaro thus outsourced a central element of its business model, incurring a number of unnecessary and slowing-down frictions.

“Marketing had to wait weeks for each new operation. For the product and tech teams, this was an unjustifiable waste of time.”

The goal was clear: empower teams, simplify the user experience and modernize processes.

A three-pronged organization

From the outset, the project was structured around a strong trio: Product, Tech and Marketing.

“The success of this project was due to a close collaboration between the three of us: Valentin Jubert (Marketing), Benjamin Lupu (Product) and Sandrine Crozat (Technical). No one was simply a customer of another team: we designed the tool for ourselves,” explains Benjamin Lupu, Product Manager Readers and Subscriber Experience.

Involving senior management was also decisive in this. “Management teams, including Marc Feuillée (CEO of Le Figaro), were committed sponsors and followed the project on a weekly basis. That makes all the difference,” he adds.

Project goals

This project pursued several major ambitions:

• Reduce dependence on service providers and internalize strategic knowledge
• Modernize subscription funnels, both for users and for product and marketing teams
• Make marketing teams autonomous in launching offers and campaigns
• Harmonize customer spaces across the group’s various brands (Le Figaro, Gala, Le Particulier). From now on, a single “My Account” space will group all profile information together
• Overhaul and improve data flows to make them reliable and distribute them to all internal systems

Experimentation and tech-stack choices

One of the underlying building blocks of this major project was, of course, to change the platform used to manage digital subscriptions. The final choice – Chargebee – was only made after several POCs:

• An internal POC to see if it was possible to develop everything in-house
• A POC to test Stripe Billing, which turned out to be too limited for Le Figaro’s needs
• In-depth discussions were also held with Zuora, with whom it was not possible to carry out a POC
• Chargebee, chosen after a three-month POC, offering the right balance between functional richness and agility

“Functionally rich, Chargebee has also been very transparent about what they can and can’t do. Our technical team was thrilled. We set up a Slack channel between us, which has been great for efficiency! Their technical support team is in India, but we never felt the jet lag, they seemed to be available 24-hours for us – for really reasonable prices,” explains Valentin Jubert.

“On the other hand, everyone’s knowledge of our data model and our businesses was limited. We had to do a lot of the translation work from GLI to Chargebee on our own,” adds Benjamin Lupu.

A total revamp in a few steps

The AMEX project was carried out in several phases:

1. Redesign of subscriber account space: total overhaul of the “My account” space, unifying six different spaces (print + digital from the group’s three titles: Le Figaro, Gala and Le Particulier) into a single one – October 2024

2. New acquisition tunnels: tested on a part of the audience in November 2024 before generalization in December

3. Migration of digital subscribers: gradual switch to Chargebee, replacing GLI for B2C digital subscribers in early 2025

4. Integration of a new customer service tool: late but essential integration of Salesforce in five months, with an MVP “on the bone” to meet the December 2024 deadline

5. Overhaul of accounting and data flows: upgrade of accounting flows and synchronization of data with a future group CDP project (Treasure Data).

Drastic choices to simplify the user experience

Le Figaro has made radical choices to enhance the user experience:

• Mobile first: 80% of visits are made on mobile, so priority has been given to ultra-optimized design

• Fewer offers, greater clarity: rather than inundating the user with choice, a single offer is highlighted, with a price variation based on different criteria

Three clear offers:

• Access (€10-12): digital content + the digital version of the daily newspaper (PDF) + sharing an article + the ability to comment on articles
• Premium (€15-17): + 2 additional accounts + digital versions of Figaro Magazine and Madame Figaro (PDF) + Figaro Jeux and Figaro Cuisine applications
• Premium+ (€20-22): 2 additional accounts and digital versions of Figaro Histoire, Figaro Hors-série, Figaro Santé, Gala and Le Particulier magazines

Positioning has been optimized to favor Premium and Premium+ subscriptions, which represent 65% of the portfolio and maximize ARPU.

• Payment rethink: change of payment gateway from HiPay to Stripe, with solutions to reduce involuntary churn, such as the ability to update expired blue cards

A mammoth subscriber migration

“Subscriber migration is the toughest part of the job,” confides Benjamin Lupu. Unlike redesigning tunnels, where corrections can be made after the fact, migration leaves no room for error.

First, we had to map the existing system to understand the thousands of use cases. Then, three blank migrations were carried out before the big leap. “We had only one chance to succeed. We checked every subscriber and every invoice.”

Another challenge was the transition period. Between December 10 – the date of the “Go migration” – and the final migration on January 31, no more new bankcard tokens could be taken on the Hipay and GLI side. “We implemented workarounds to avoid losing subscribers, but it required a huge amount of manual work from customer services, which was exceptional.”

What would you do differently?

• Anticipate the management of customer service and accounting flows: “We took them on too late, which was a mistake,” admits Benjamin Lupu. “Don’t underestimate the complexity of accounting: get help from experts. For our part, we worked with Advolis and Marc Duveau.”
• Better anticipate the need for a robust process: “We had to rebuild our entire Q&A process, with hundreds of use cases to test.”

The results: considerable time and efficiency savings

Today, the benefits are clear:

• Subscription time halved: 25 seconds instead of 50 to take out a subscription
• Transformation rate increased from 0.7% to 0.9%
• Launch of an offer in a few hours, compared with several weeks previously
• A flexible subscription tunnel: allowing upsell, cross-sell and the addition of new payment methods on the fly
• More efficient customer service: it previously took three weeks of training and three months to build the skills of a new advisor. Now, thanks to the new unified interface, a call center agent is up and running in just two days

All in all, “AMEX” has enabled Le Figaro to regain control of the implementation of its digital strategy.

“This project has given us a clear roadmap for the years to come,” concludes Valentin Valentin Jubert.

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After 8 months of A/B testing and several iterations, Le Monde‘s marketing team has decided on (for now at least) the French publisher’s new subscription offers page. I met Virgile de Tassigny, Growth Marketing Manager at Le Monde, who told me all about this major project.

> Le Monde designed its offers page for mobile first, where 75% of traffic sits, then adapted to desktop. Tunnel entries rose 26% on desktop and 18% on mobile against the old page

> Annual plans were pulled off the landing page and moved into the purchase tunnel. Annual conversions fell 16%, monthly rose enough to more than cover it, and total conversions went up

> Simplification overshot. Stripping out offer names and cutting to three benefits left readers unsure they had clicked the right thing, because the funnel still showed the old longer lists

> The fix was consistency rather than more copy. Offer name, account count and benefits now match on the landing page and in the tunnel. A page redesign is a journey redesign

> Student offers sat below the fold and were hard to find. Surfacing them lifted student conversions 25%. A black CTA also lost to the historic yellow readers already associate with subscribing

The original (or control)

Launched in 2020, at the same time as their new conversion funnel, the “control” displays 3 offers, with one (the “Duo” offer, ideal for couples needing 2 accounts) centered and highlighted as “Recommended”:

But after 4 years of existence, this page needed a thorough refresh.

1. Too much text kills the message (and conversion)

The old page was dense, with repeated information and several scattered CTAs. The result was a high cognitive load and an unruly user experience.

The first priority of Le Monde‘s redesign was therefore to simplify the offering. From now on, each formula will highlight a maximum of two to three key benefits (instead of a long list) with the aim of speeding up decision-making.

They also decided to elimination the little-understood labels, such as “Essential” or “Family”.

The first iteration led to this version:

The post Testing and optimizing our subscription offers page at Le Monde appeared first on Audiencers.

The Second Audiencers’ Festival in Paris, this November 21st, 2024, brought together the crème de la crème of French media digital marketing directors (and not only).

From identifying user needs and adapting formats, to finding the right price and retention, digital publishing professionals shared their tips on audience acquisition and monetization. To share these wider than the Festival attendees, I’ve summed them up in 10 commandments! Enjoy!

1. Know your audience

Les Echos, represented by Violaine Degas, created no fewer than 12 personas from their reader surveys on both B2C and B2B audiences.

The very precise personas detail centers of interest, as well as preferred information channels and timeframes.

This allows them to better target sales offers and marketing messages to each reader. For instance, why line up all 50 subscriber benefits on the offers page when only three are relevant to that specific user? Listing them all could even be a deterrent…

As for the newsroom, four or five personas can be used to identify reader needs and priorities to target each article, ensuring all published work has a clear goal.

Les Echos went even further, creating its own panel of 4,000 subscribers (60%) and prospects (40%) via the Alida platform. Young people and women are under-represented, but the group is working on it!

This allows them to regularly send panelists short quizzes, studies or videos, or even to spend a quarter of an hour chatting with them, to better identify reader needs and adapt editorial products (formats, distribution channels, publication timing).

2. Define and measure (your own type of) engagement

Define an engagement score. Several speakers referred to the classic RFV (recency, frequency and volume) index, which can be used to determine editorial performance by mixing quali and quanti criteria.

Dorothée Fluckiger from Prisma added to “recurrence of visits per month” the “average duration of sessions”.

Romain Lhote of L’Equipe weights this RFV index by the journalistic value of an article or topic. This makes it possible to include value of being associated with a subject (as a brand) or societal value – for instance, few read this article on defending Madagascan women’s cause, but we’re happy to associate ourselves morally with those who defend it. This is to mitigate the outright deletion of ghost articles.

L’Equipe also tempers the index by measuring article’s advertising yield. If advertisers are keen on a subject of little interest, there’s no reason not to do it. These revenues will finance other, more popular subjects.

As for Les Echos, they’ve set up a system for evaluating “quality reads”. This technical device measures how far a user scrolls, and how long they spend on a page. The result is an average efficiency index that enables the team to assess the quality of the attention that an article holds.

This index is combined with quantitative audience performance (number of page views), to determine hot or cold editorial optimization axes.

Hot editorial optimization axes:

These indicators make it possible to adapt production in real time (change the title, caption, add recirculation links, highlight the article on the homepage or social networks, etc.).

Cold editorial optimization axes:

Identify trends in terms of formats or needs served to readers.

3. Don’t talk down to readers, especially GenZ

That’s the advice from Lisbeth Nizet of MediaHuis. The new generation, our future readers and subscribers, want to be involved in the discussion.

These 12-25 year-olds like content that is embodied, accessible and fun. They like to give their opinion, contradict, protest.

“Don’t talk down to me, but make me smarter” and respect the content creators for whom I have affection.

Other recommendations:

• Don’t sugarcoat information, but offer solutions (constructive journalism)
• Be sincere, even in your faults and mistakes
• Provide practical services
• Take inspiration from media brands such as Brut, TLDR, Volv & Zetland
  

4.  Build a strong community

After preaching in the wilderness for a long time, it seems that some media outlets are finally proving me right. That community is the prerequisite for a subscription (or any digital revenue) strategy, as I’ve been saying for a long time.

Médiapart took a considerable lead by launching its own community 15 years ago, and maintaining it. This is in contrast to free media sites, which have gradually shut their comments and interactive spaces down from 2016 onwards.

The advent of the paid model in 2017 should have led to their transformation, not their disappearance. Community building features such as these are a formidable acquisition and loyalty driver.

L’Equipe has understood this, deciding to revitalize its comments with a makeover (below). Better still, the sports site’s interactive spaces enable exchanges between subscribers, as well as with the editorial team. It’s an attention to detail that readers appreciate.

The same goes for Les Echos, which has redesigned its contributors’ area. They’ve realized that enhancing the value of readers is also a powerful factor in building loyalty, and even acquisition.

5. Establish value exchanges: content for data

Access to quizzes, personality tests, newsletters, white papers, podcasts… you need to offer something valuable to a user in exchange for data collection.

Some marketing tools, such as Actito, offer this kind of editorial functionality to attract registrations (and therefore user data).

6. Test pricing models to optimize ARPU

Le Monde has abandoned its old prices, which were holding the publisher back not only acquisition, but above all on revenue growth.

The old price range:

To reinvent their pricing model, Lou Grasser worked with Le Monde’s data-scientists to set up a predictive model based on subscription and churn (attrition) data from its entire base.

The new tariffs had to avoid cannibalizing each other. We remember the New York Times’ $8 offer for the Now application, which attracted subscribers who paid much more.

The group analyzed everything: the impact of pricing on subscriber churn, on new subscriber acquisition, on revenue… The results was three tariffs – €9.99 (web), €19.99 (2 accounts) and €29.99 euros (4 accounts) were found to be the most profitable.

What Le Monde has learned from its tests and analysis via predictive models:

• Annual price promotions aren’t that smart, because they’ll cannibalize fans, without reaching opportunists.

• It’s better to offer a monthly discount (with a one-month promotion per year, not two).

• The 5-euro offer (-50%) is not profitable, because while it works well for acquisition, better than the 10-euro offer, it doesn’t generate enough subscriptions to compensate for the smaller gain.

• The student offer was not sufficiently promoted, even though it was clicked on 7 times more than the other offers.

Other learnings

• It’s important to take care of the offers page to “show more than tell”. Hence the use of a carousel displaying the best-selling content.
• It’s also important to diversify prices and payment methods internationally (especially in Africa).

7. Ensure you’re effectively monetizing your existing audience before looking to acquire new audiences

Prisma has no shortage of user data. The group has 18 million accounts logged-in via its in-house SSO (Prisma Media Connect), and a third are subscribed to one or more newsletters.

Google one tap on Chrome is the group’s primary vector for subscriptions. The trick: Prisma re-targets these users to invite them to sign up for a newsletter (and retrieve an “in-house” login).

But not everyone can be converted into a subscriber. If Prisma converts 0.5 to 1% of its audience via paywalls, it will be a great success says Dorothée Fluckiger.

There are therefore 3 objectives for this data: 

• Attract the right reader to the right CRM channel: conversion to subscriber, enhancement through advertising, e-commerce affiliation…
• Increase advertising yield by targeting users who are logged in (+34% average RPM if logged in, according to Prisma calculations)
• Save on paid acquisition campaigns

8. Organize your team according to goals

It needs to be light, via squads (small multi-trade teams with a product manager, a developer, a sales person and an editor, for example), aligned on the same objectives, with the same incentives. And who get on well together!

At Ebra, Morgane Alimi explains that there is a central coordinator who supports the teams, and then a dozen ambassadors in each division.

At Prisma, “lead sponsors” pilot the projects and tests with the various departments (marketing, data-analysts, Ux design, Dev, CRM…).

At Les Echos (inspired by the Wall Street Journal), the organization is matrix-based and cross-functional by business rather than by media brand:

• Platform division (HP sites, app’ ) – topic control
• Audience Engagement (distribution, search, RS), editing
• Visual department (photo and video editing)

The same applies at Prisma, where the matrix organization is also based on squads, to ensure agility and proximity to the field.

Dorothée Fluckiger’s trick for conducting her tests with peace of mind is to be under the radar in terms of costs, and to highlight the savings achieved. By trying to encourage decision-makers to invest more heavily in digital marketing.

9. Subscription cancellations need to be dealt with, and quick

The first few days of cancellation are the most important, so don’t delay!

Romain Lhote tells us that 70% of resubscriptions are made within 7 days of cancellation.

Whilst ex-subscribers are 18 times more likely to re-subscribe than members, and 324 times more likely than anonymous readers!

Hence the crucial role of Customer Service, who must be given the facts: not only the history of each user, but also a maintenance guide. So as not to immediately offer a discount, before knowing what the problem is.

• Is the problem editorial? Is there content or newsletters they don’t know about, or is it possible to offer them special promotions?

• Is it the timing of distribution? Focus on configurable alerts, the free app, etc.

10. A different audience often requires a different media and branding entirely

Such is the case with Retronews, which has created a second portal to distinguish the general public from its B2B customers.

It’s a valuable lesson for other media. “What’s the probability,” asked a member of the audience, ”that a young reader who subscribes to the newspaper’s social account, where we broadcast fun short videos, will subscribe to the paper newspaper?” Zero or close to it.

The reality is that the information model proposed for Generation Z or even Millenialls (the generation after) is not adapted to their preferences, neither in content nor in form. We’re going to have to reinvent ourselves more radically if we want to attract new readers.

But in the meantime, we have to produce something that – with a few exceptions – supports most press groups. According to APIG CEO Pierre Pétillaut, paper will still account for 80% of average press revenues in 2023.

11. BONUS TRACK. Test and measure progress (derr!)

Whether it’s acquisition or retention, success, as in Fame, can only be paid for in one currency: sweat.

You have to test everything: creative direction, visuals, prices, benefits, distribution channels and timing.

For L’Equipe, this represents over 300 subscription promotion messages per year. You know what you have to do. ^^ Test test test.

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