Jack Riley, Chief Customer Officer at The Observer, explains why the 233-year-old title launched with a single umbrella subscription rather than tiers, how Culture Club became a central retention bet, and why the hardest part of the build has been saying no.

> The Observer launched its first-ever digital subscription in November 2025 at £16 a month or £144 a year, with a single umbrella tier covering print, digital, audio and Culture Club benefits from spring this year.
> Culture Club, a set of arts and culture perks worth more than £800, is given to every subscriber instead of being held back for a premium tier.
> Early data shows subscribers who engage with multiple parts of the product, from Nigel Slater's recipes to the puzzles to podcasts, are significantly less likely to cancel.
> The Salt Path investigation and its podcast and documentary afterlife have been the single biggest growth catalyst since launch.

Lessons:
> A single, transparent subscription can beat early tiering when you are reintroducing a brand to its audience.
> Retention comes from breadth of engagement across a product, not from any one flagship story.
> Old brand equity can bridge readers into new daily habits, but only if the product is built to earn that habit.

When Jack Riley joined The Observer in 2025, he inherited separate journalistic businesses rather than one. Tortoise Media built digital infrastructure for audio, events and membership, but not the volume or breadth of content a newspaper needs.

The Observer brought a newsroom with genuine authority and a 233-year history, but none of the digital scaffolding that sits around it. “We really had to design a lot of stuff almost from scratch in order to bring it to life,” Riley says.

The consolidation happened in two waves. The first was making sure the Sunday paper kept getting out of a newly combined newsroom. The second was an open-access sampling site throughout the summer, used to build registration and newsletter lists ahead of a proper launch. What followed was an intense six months of building and prototyping: new iOS and Android apps for phone and tablet, a full website redesign, brand refresh and the subscription infrastructure underneath it, including analytics, paywall logic, access controls and integrations with both the Guardian’s print systems and Tortoise’s existing membership base.

Why there are no tiers

Where many publishers reach for tiers early, The Observer launched with a single umbrella subscription covering print, digital, audio and now, Culture Club (see below). “We wanted the subscription to be simple to understand, great value for money and comprehensive,” Riley says. Reintroducing a heritage brand to an audience that may not be familiar with it, or has never encountered it digitally at all, is not the moment to ask people to choose between packages.

A separate audio-only subscription, a legacy of the Tortoise audio model, exists through Apple Podcasts and Spotify for readers who want nothing else, and there is real cross-pollination between formats. But the umbrella model is deliberate: with only six months of data, Riley says tiering decisions now would rest on very little evidence. Simplicity was the safer bet, leaving room to see where the value lands before carving up the product.

Culture Club, for every subscriber

The Observer’s most visible product launch since the initial rollout is Culture Club, a set of arts and culture benefits bundled into every subscription: two-for-one tickets to the National Gallery, exclusive cinema screenings with directors, author events and book clubs held in the newsroom, and discounted theatre tickets. “It’s your cultural life, curated,” is how Riley describes it.

Rather than a separate product built for a distinct audience, Culture Club is included in the standard subscription and goes to every reader who pays for it, with no separate tier. Riley frames it as adding significant partner benefits to those that The Observer was already quietly offering, like giving a 70% discount on home cinema memberships through their partner MUBI and turning them into a coherent proposition tied to the brand’s editorial identity. Arts and culture were the deliberate focus rather than, say, food or travel: Riley sees it as a standout interest for Observer audiences that other subscription products in the market have overlooked. The commercial logic is retention as much as acquisition: subscribers who attend an event or use a benefit build a tangible relationship with the brand that a login alone cannot create.

Riley traces the conviction to the i newspaper, where he launched reader events and saw that most people find news organisations distant and faintly mysterious right up until they are sitting in a room talking to a journalist. Subscribers who have had that kind of experience with a brand, in his experience, are simply more likely to stay, which is the logic Culture Club now builds into the subscription itself.

Pricing without the tricks

The Observer priced its subscription at £16 a month or £144 a year, deliberately avoiding 99p-style pricing. “That was part of just trying to be really clear about what we think the value is of the work that we’re doing,” Riley says. An under-35 price point at 50% off acknowledges that younger readers are often priced out of premium subscriptions, with 35 chosen as a deliberate life-stage threshold.

The Observer has no obvious competitor to benchmark against. The Guardian’s UK voluntary model and the Times’ hard paywall represent decades of pricing evolution aimed largely at winning back or re-engaging audiences a mature business has already exhausted. The Observer has no such legacy to correct for, which Riley treats as an advantage: the headline price can reflect where the business is now, without unwinding years of promotional pricing.

What’s driving retention

Six months in, Riley says the clearest signal in the data is breadth of engagement. Subscribers who touch multiple parts of the product, reading Nigel Slater’s recipes, doing the crossword and listening to a podcast, are significantly less likely to cancel than those who arrived for one thing and never explored further. Because the product is still young, many subscribers do not yet know everything they have access to.

That is why subscriber messaging pushes Culture Club so hard: highlighting more than £800 in available benefits is a fast way to demonstrate value to someone who subscribed for a single podcast series before they reach a cancellation decision. The Observer has also seen a healthier-than-expected skew towards annual plans, which Riley reads as an early show of faith, buying time to build a relationship before the first renewal.

The Salt Path’s second life

The Chloe Hadjimatheou investigation into the bestselling memoir The Salt Path was a hit before the subscription even existed, driving millions of readers to the open-access site last summer and helping build the registration base the launch depended on. In January, a narrative podcast series built on the investigation became, in Riley’s words, the biggest catalyst for subscriber growth in the first few months after launch, driving uptake in both the standalone audio subscription and the full subscription that includes it. A Sky documentary over Christmas had extended the story’s reach further. A new Hadjimatheou series, We Call Her Emma, has just been released, an investigation focusing on the extraordinary rise of Asma al-Assad from West London girl to the heart of Syria’s brutal dictatorship: the next test of whether a story that brings subscribers in at scale can hand them on to the rest of the product.

Building fast without the legacy costs

The Observer’s product team has moved almost entirely to an agentic coding approach, using AI tools to handle the bulk of feature development. A small team of engineers from an outside agency works alongside an in-house tech lead and product manager. Claude writes most of the code for new features, while the engineers concentrate on harder technical problems and on testing and quality assurance, checking that the output does what it was meant to. The approach lets a young, lean organisation compete with newsrooms that have far larger legacy technology teams, freeing more of the business’s resources for journalism itself.

Riley applies the same instinct himself. After seeing a story-support widget demonstrated by a US publishers’ collective at the recent Audiencers Festival in London, he built a rough version of it within an afternoon, not to launch it but to show his own team the idea. Prototyping, he says, has become quick enough that showing is often faster than telling.

On the harder question of AI companies and publisher content, Riley is careful not to stake out a fixed position. The Observer has partnered with Particle News, an AI-powered aggregation app, as its first UK publisher, and Riley points to Reuters Institute research showing a growing share of global news journeys now beginning inside a chatbot as a signal publishers cannot ignore, whatever position they eventually take on direct deals versus industry coalitions.

The hardest part isn’t the technology

Asked what has been harder than expected, Riley doesn’t hesitate: discipline. A brand this old, with this much editorial breadth, invites endless extensions: more tiers, more products, more features, especially now that the barrier to building any of them has collapsed.

“When Claude can build you a recipe site in an afternoon, you have to ask yourself: is that really what we want to build?”

Riley has previously cited The Atlantic’s decade-long path to a million subscribers as a realistic model for the kind of timeline this takes. His ambition for The Observer is to build a sustainably profitable media business on reader revenue and other income streams, and he argues that doing so without the legacy cost base of an older company changes the calculation. He won’t share subscriber numbers this early. Six months in, he says, The Observer is on track. There is, by his own admission, still a long way to go.

Jack Riley is Chief Customer Officer at The Observer, where he leads customer revenue strategy across subscription growth, marketing, data and product. He joined in 2025 from The London Standard, where he was Chief Digital Officer, and previously led Huffington Post’s turnaround to profitability as Managing Director. The Observer is owned by Tortoise Media.

The post Inside The Observer’s first digital subscription: one tier, one price and a lot of self-discipline appeared first on Audiencers.

Lennart Schneider, founder of Subscribe Now podcast & newsletter, and expert on digital subscription models, interviews Stefan Bader, CEO and Co-founder of Cello, to discuss how to build a referral program that ensures sustained growth.
-> Why visibility is the decisive factor
-> How to choose the right rewards
-> Why fairness wins
-> and how you can reduce the cost risk in customer acquisition

For years, companies have been struggling with the same challenge. Specifically, rising customer acquisition costs are making it increasingly difficult to win new subscribers at affordable prices.

There are many reasons for this – paid marketing is becoming increasingly expensive, SEO has less reach since the spread of LLMs, and social media algorithms play a significant role on who sees which content, and when.

However, there’s one growth lever that’s often overlooked, one that can help decrease dependence on external players… your own users. Satisfied, loyal fans are already recommending you, and if implemented correctly, this can become a valuable and inexpensive acquisition channel.

At least that’s what Stefan Badar, CEO and Co-founder of Cello, and guest on my Subscribe Now podcast shared, and he makes some great arguments. Cello, a company based in Munich, has built a referral software that’s now used by some of the world’s leading tech companies, including Miro, Typeform, and Riverside.

In this article, summarizing my conversation with Stefan, you’ll learn how to build a referral program that ensures sustained growth:

• Why visibility is the decisive factor
• How to choose the right rewards
• Why fairness wins
• …and how you can reduce the cost risk in customer acquisition

By the way: You can try out Cello directly. Using my referral link will save you €1,000 and I’ll receive a commission if you become a customer, a great opportunity to support my work.

1. Stop hiding referral programs

The biggest mistake for a referral program is hiding it in a sub-menu. Permanent visibility at the top of the app leads to the strongest user engagement.

The example above, from Neotaste, illustrates this very well. The recommendation program appears on the first screen when you open the app and above the map in the Discover tab.

Stefan gives five tips for optimal visibility:

1. If the recommendation icon is visible on the first level and not hidden in a submenu, the usage rate increases by 8x.
2. In addition to a gift symbol, the monetary value of the recommendation should also be displayed. A currency symbol increases performance by 3.3x.
3. A small animation also draws attention to the referral program – even if we’ve seen a screen many times before and are therefore blind to changes.
4. Moments of delight: Specifically look for moments when your user has had a positive experience, such as at the end of an article, or after giving a good rating in the NPS survey. These moments are the perfect time for a recommendation.
5. CRM integration: You should also regularly remind your users about the referral program via email or other push channels.

2. Cash beats most other rewards

A referral program is only as strong as the rewards it offers. There are many options: free months, discounts, raffles, vouchers, gifts, etc. But Stefan has seen that money works best for most customers.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Money is universally usable and therefore interesting for every user.
2. Money remains an incentive even after the tenth or twentieth recommendation, while free months eventually lose their appeal. Many users recommend a product not just once, but on average six to seven times. Money is therefore the perfect incentive for heavy recommenders.
3. Money is attractive even to non-subscribers. In freemium models, roughly 90% of users don’t have a subscription, but that doesn’t mean they won’t recommend the product. A successful referral program mobilizes all users, not just paying ones.
4. Money also works in the B2B sector: A free month may only benefit the employer who pays for the subscription, whilst a cash bonus goes directly to the employee making recommendations.
5. Money can be paid out over a longer period. And that brings us to the next point…

3. Rewards grow with lifetime value

Paid subscription advertising always carries a risk: Acquisition costs are incurred when a subscription is signed, but it’s only months later that you see whether a new customer has recouped those costs. That’s why a short payback period and a good ratio of Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) to Lifetime Value (LTV) are so crucial.

A referral program can reduce this risk: The bonus doesn’t have to be paid out as a fixed amount at the start, but is distributed monthly as long as the referred user remains a subscriber. In Miro’s example, as the referrer, I receive 10% of the ongoing subscription fees. When the referred subscription ends, my bonus also ends. This eliminates the risk of spending more on a customer than you earn from them.

These ongoing payouts have another advantage: they remind users every month on their bank statement that the referral program is worthwhile, thus motivating them to make further referrals.

4. Bonuses must be worthwhile for both sides.

Another key to success is fairness: When I recommend a product, I’m investing my social capital. If my friends are disappointed or feel exploited, the relationship and my social standing can suffer. So it’s essential that users feel comfortable with the recommendation.

Rewards should therefore not be one-sided. Opt for a balanced reward rather than a particularly high bonus for the referrer, something that also motivates the receiving party to click through the link and use your product. Ultimately, a large number of invitation links sent out are useless if the offers aren’t redeemed, and an attractive, exclusive discount increases the acceptance rate.

However, you should ensure that the discount is time-limited – ideally for the first three or six months. If you offer an indefinite discount, you risk negatively impacting your ARPU in the long run.

This article was originally published in German on the Subscribe Now website, translated and republished with permission.

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In this article, Davide Liverino, B2B marketing leader focused on subscription revenue growth, uncovers how Netflix has used the release dates of the latest Stranger Things episodes as a strategic lock-in for their subscription model.

> Netflix released the final Stranger Things season on 26 November, 25 December and 31 December. The gap between first episode and finale is 36 days. A standard subscription is 30

> Sign up for the premiere and you renew on 26 December. The second batch drops on the 25th, one day before expiry, then you are locked out with the story unfinished. The finale requires a second payment

> That doubles a transient subscriber's value, from about £13 to £26. Davide Liverino estimates five million re-activations would make the six-day gap worth around £65 million, purely from scheduling

> The dead air between drops is a feature. Four weeks of Reddit theories and TikTok breakdowns hold daily active users up with no ad spend, and the holiday dates turn streaming into appointment viewing

> The transferable rule: never let a customer reach a renewal date with nothing left to see. Schedule the next unlock just after the renewal rather than before it

A masterpiece of financial engineering

Netflix’s Stranger Things schedule is a masterpiece of financial engineering. It looks like a holiday gift for fans. It is actually a calculated assault on the monthly billing cycle.

I’ve been analysing the release schedule for the final season of Stranger Things, and the dates (Nov 26, Dec 25, Dec 31) reveal a sophisticated “Subscription Bridge” strategy. By creating a 36-day window for a 30-day product, Netflix isn’t just releasing content; they are mathematically forcing a renewal event.

In this deep-dive article, I deconstruct:

• The “Subscription Bridge”: How a 6-day gap can double Lifetime Value (LTV).
• The “Pulse” Strategy: Why the binge model is dead, and what is replacing it.
• The Defensive Moat: Making use of engaging content releases during churn danger zones
• The B2B Application: How SaaS leaders can use “cliffhanger” mechanics to reduce churn during high-risk renewal periods.

This is a blueprint for anyone managing recurring revenue.

At first glance, the release schedule for the final season of Stranger Things looks like a celebration of fandom. A Thanksgiving premiere (November 26th), a Christmas special (December 25th), and a New Year’s Eve finale (December 31st). It dominates the Western holiday calendar, turning a TV show into a global cultural event.

But if you look past the nostalgia and the Demogorgons, you will see one of the most sophisticated pieces of financial engineering in the history of the streaming wars.

This schedule isn’t about artistic pacing. It is a calculated assault on the subscription model’s greatest weakness: the “transient” user who joins, binges, and cancels in 29 days.

Part 1: The Architecture of the “Subscription Bridge”

In this analysis, we will explore the financial mechanics behind this pulse strategy and the defensive moat it creates during the holidays. Crucially, I will outline an actionable strategy for applying these same retention principles to your own B2B revenue architecture.

The genius of this release lies in the cold, hard calendar math.

The gap between the first episode (November 26th) and the finale (December 31st) is exactly 36 days.

A standard Netflix subscription lasts 30 days.

This is not a coincidence; it is a “Subscription Bridge.” By engineering a release window that exceeds the billing cycle by just six days, Netflix has mathematically checkmated the “tourist” subscriber.

Consider the user journey for the millions of users who will sign up solely for Stranger Things:

1. The Acquisition (Nov 26): The user subscribes to watch the premiere batch. Their billing cycle is set to renew on December 26th.
2. The Retention Trap (Dec 25): One day before their subscription expires, Netflix drops the second batch. This is the bait. The user watches the Christmas episodes, re-engaging with the narrative arc.
3. The Lock-Out (Dec 26): The user’s subscription expires. They have seen the Christmas special, but the story is incomplete.
4. The Forced Conversion (Dec 31): The finale drops. To see how the story ends, the user is mathematically locked out unless they trigger a second payment.

The Revenue Impact:

In a standard binge model, a transient user generates £12.99/$15.49 (one month of Standard tier in the UK/US).

In this “Bridged” model, that same user is forced to generate £25.98/$30.98.

If Stranger Things attracts 5 million re-activations or new sign-ups (a conservative estimate given its history), this 6-day bridge alone generates roughly £65/$77 million in incremental revenue, which is pure profit derived solely from scheduling.

Part 2: The “Pulse” Strategy vs. The Binge

For a decade, Netflix defended its “all-at-once” binge model as a superior user experience. Meanwhile, competitors like HBO (House of the Dragon) and Disney+ (The Mandalorian) enjoyed the sustained cultural relevance, and months of retention, that come with weekly releases.

The binge model offers a massive dopamine hit, but the conversation burns out in a week. It creates a spike in acquisition but fails to build a habit.

With Stranger Things, Netflix is deploying a Hybrid Pulse Strategy designed to solve this attention deficit.

By releasing content in three distinct “pulses” over five weeks, they are attempting to capture the best of both worlds:

• Pulse 1 (Thanksgiving): The Volume Drop. This satisfies the binge-watchers’ need for immersion and hooks the audience deep into the ecosystem.
• The Speculation Engine (Nov 27 – Dec 24): This “dead air” is a feature, not a bug. It is designed to be filled by the audience. The gap breeds Reddit theories, TikTok breakdowns, and media speculation. It turns the audience into a free marketing army, sustaining Daily Active Users (DAU) without Netflix spending a dollar on ad spend.
• Pulse 2 & 3 (The Holidays): The Event Drops. By aligning specific high-stakes episodes with Christmas and NYE, they turn streaming into “appointment viewing,” reclaiming the communal experience usually reserved for live sports.

Part 3: The Defensive Moat (Holiday Share of Mind)

The dates themselves are a masterclass in defensive strategy. November, December, and January are the “Churn Danger Zone.” Consumers are auditing their finances for Christmas spending, and discretionary subscriptions are often the first to be cut.

Simultaneously, competitors are aggressive. Disney+ and Amazon Prime save their biggest blockbusters for this window to capture families during their time off.

By claiming the three biggest Western holidays, Netflix is playing defense. During the holidays, consumers have high “Share of Time” (days off work) but fragmented “Share of Attention.” By aligning releases with specific holidays, Netflix positions Stranger Things not just as a show, but as the default family activity.

They are co-opting the holidays to crowd out competitors. If a family is debating whether to keep Disney+ or Netflix for the holidays, the existence of a Christmas Day Stranger Things event makes Netflix the “must-have” utility for that month.

Part 4: The B2B Operator’s Playbook

While most of us aren’t managing billion-dollar media assets, the principles behind the “Subscription Bridge” are directly applicable to B2B SaaS and subscription businesses.

We often make the mistake of front-loading value, delivering everything during onboarding and then wondering why churn spikes at Month 12. We treat renewals as administrative dates rather than strategic opportunities.

Here is how you can translate Netflix’s strategy into B2B revenue protection:

1. The “Contractual Cliffhanger”

The Concept: Never allow a customer to reach a renewal date with “nothing left to see.”

The Tactic: Audit your customer success journey. If you have a renewal coming up in Q4, structure your implementation so that a critical “unlock” (such as a new module, a strategic consultation, or an advanced data report) is scheduled for delivery just after the renewal date.

The Result: You change the renewal conversation from “What have you done for me lately?” to “I need to stick around to get X.”

2. The “Pulse” Release Cycle

The Concept: Avoid the “Big Bang” release that is forgotten in a week.

The Tactic: Instead of dumping a massive feature update once a year, release updates in “pulses” aligned with your customers’ internal budget cycles. If you know your clients review vendors in Q4, ensure you have a “Christmas Drop”, a high-impact feature release scheduled for November that validates their decision to renew right before they make the decision.

3. Engineer the Bridge

The Concept: Use data to predict and bridge churn gaps.

The Tactic: Analyse your churn data. If you see a spike at Day 90 (end of onboarding), look at your product usage at Day 80. Is the user running out of things to do? You need to engineer a “Subscription Bridge” at Day 75. This is something that initiates a new value cycle that cannot be completed until Day 100.

Conclusion

Netflix has proven that release schedules are no longer just about art; they are a function of the billing cycle. As commercial leaders, we need to stop viewing our product delivery as a flat line and start designing it as a series of bridges that guide the customer safely over every renewal risk.

The post Subscription Lock-In: Deconstructing Netflix’s “Stranger Things” Strategy appeared first on Audiencers.

This article was written by Lennart Schneider, founder of Subscribe Now podcast & newsletter, and expert on digital subscription models.

Everything is getting more and more expensive, including subscriptions. Those who don’t adjust their prices regularly will lose revenue in the long run due to inflation. But of course, with a price increase comes churn risk. So how do you balance the two: increase revenues and retention despite price increase?

To help answer this question, I spoke to pricing expert Florian Bauer in my Subscribe Now podcast where he explained to us when you should increase prices, how to communicate this gently and why you should always offer alternatives.

Here are his 7 biggest mistakes to avoid.

The post Subscription price increase: the 7 biggest mistakes to avoid appeared first on Audiencers.

Hi, I’m Suchit Patel, Account Strategist at Multidots, helping digital publishers optimize their subscription strategies and maximize long-term revenue through strategic technology solutions.

In this article, we explore why promotional pricing strategies might be undermining your subscription revenue goals, examining the psychology behind discount addiction and sharing actionable alternatives that protect long-term profitability.

Picture this: You’re at your quarterly board meeting, proudly presenting your subscriber acquisition numbers. The graphs look great—thousands of new subscribers poured in during your latest 50% off promotion. But then someone asks the dreaded question: “What’s our churn rate looking like?”

That’s when the smile starts to fade.

If you’re relying heavily on discount promotions to drive subscription growth, you might be winning the battle but losing the war. Here’s why your discount strategy could be undermining your long-term revenue goals, and what to do about it.

The post The hidden cost of discount addiction: why 50% off promotions are killing your subscription revenue appeared first on Audiencers.

Warning, not to be read when hungry!

Article originally published in German on pv digest, a German language trade publication on the reader revenue side of journalism by Markus Schöberl.

A digital subscription to the New York Times currently costs long-term subscribers in the USA $27.08 per month; subscribers from Germany pay €13 per month from the second year onwards. The NZZ sells its digital subscription in Germany for €18.90 per month. Swiss citizens pay 32CHF for this. Membership of the Danish digital-only start-up Zetland costs 139 Danish kroner per month, while the Spanish digital-only start-up El Diario charges €8 – the same as the German Krautreportern, and similar to De Correspondent in the Netherlands, costing €9.85. Bildplus costs €7.99 and the Swedish Aftonbladet Plus costs 149 Swedish kronor. The Times Basic costs £15, whilst for the web and app content at Gazeta Wyborczca you pay 36.90zł per month.

In order to be able to compare the pricing of these and other media, we need a common basis. We often convert prices into euros or US dollars for this purpose, but even after conversion into the same currency, the prices are only comparable to a limited extent. Why? Because Americans, Germans, Swiss, Danes, Spaniards, Dutch, British and Poles live in countries with different income and price levels. An amount equivalent to $10 may seem low in one country and high in another.

To overcome this, The Economist came up with a pragmatic solution for comparing prices in different currencies: the Big Mac Index. As the name suggests, the idea is to use McDonalds’ Big Mac to compare prices, given that the same product, of the same quality, is sold in a wide variety of countries around the world.

Twice a year, The Economist calculates the Big Mac Index, publishing data to determine which currencies are over- or undervalued compared to the US dollar as the lead currency. 

Using the same logic, I looked at the prices of well-known international paid content offers. 

The Big Mac Index applied to publishing: The methodology

I converted the prices for monthly subscriptions into the number of Big Macs that could be bought in the respective country for the same amount (in local currency). For all non-EU countries except Switzerland, I used the Big Mac prices shown by The Economist in the latest update of its index.

This enables the comparison of subscription prices in local ‘Big Mac equivalents’

As The Economist Index is a currency valuation tool, it uses a single burger price for all countries in the eurozone: specifically, €5.67 for a Big Mac. It’s not entirely clear how they arrived at this – presumably averaged – price, but in order to compare prices between different EU countries for this analysis, I have researched current individual Big Mac prices for each EU country and for Switzerland. It turns out that between Paris (€7.70) and Vienna (€5.60), the Big Mac is very much underpriced.

For Switzerland, we see the current price at 8.20CHF – the Economist calculated at 7.20CHF in January. 

For all other countries, we’ve used The Economist prices.

Prices for digital subscriptions in burger units: the results

Prices of various basic digital subscriptions in local Big Mac equivalents (in D = Germany)

The cheapest paid content offer in this selection is the Bild newspaper. At a regular €7.99, the monthly subscription is only marginally more expensive than the Big Mac in Berlin (€7.09). The basic subscription to Gazeta Wyborcza, which is barely more expensive in US dollars, costs Poles significantly less in reality – the equivalent of 1.7 Big Macs. 

If we compare Switzerland and Sweden, we can see how useful the Big Mac Index can be – although a subscription to Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in Switzerland costs the equivalent of almost $36 and a subscription to Dagens Nyheter in Sweden only $23, the monetary value in both countries is equivalent to around 4 Big Macs. 

The most expensive subscription – both in US$ and in local purchase price parity – is that of the Wall Street Journal.

Going deeper into the Big Mac Index comparison: Basic vs premium subscription offers

Many media differentiate between at least two digital subscriptions. A basic version, which only offers web access and perhaps an app, and a premium version, which also provides access to the e-paper or multimedia formats.

At FAZ in Germany, a basic subscription (FAZ+) converted into Big Macs above costs around $27 (€25.78) per month. However, if you also want to use the e-paper or the multimedia edition app, the subscription costs a good $50 (€47.90). 

NZZ charges the Swiss almost twice as much for its most complete subscription, which includes the e-paper, as it does for the classic subscription, namely 61 instead of 32 francs per month. This means that the NZZ is selling the most expensive subscription in our sample. However, The Wall Street Journal is significantly more expensive in local Big Mac parities.

Prices of various all-inclusive digital subscriptions in local Big Mac equivalents

Many digital-only start-ups have opted for a price that corresponds to the value of around one and a half Big Macs in their respective countries. This applies to De Correspondent from the Netherlands, El Diario from Spain, Mediapart from France and the two German media outlets Krautreporter and Perspective Daily. Converted into dollars, the most expensive of these offers (Mediapart at $12.63 per month) is around 50% more expensive than the two cheapest (El Diario and Krautreporter, at $8.42 per month each).

The most expensive in this group are Republik.ch ($24.44) and Zetland ($19.55). The Conversion into burger units turns the order in the price of the media upside down (2.7 vs. 3.6 Big Macs).

Prices of various digital-only paid content start-ups in local Big Mac equivalents

How have prices changed since 2021? 

I already presented this analysis in the July 2021 issue. This gives me a basis for comparing the development of prices. Since then, MacDonald’s burger has become 33% more expensive on average in EU countries – 29% in Germany, 37% in Austria and 14% in Switzerland. In the USA, on the other hand, the Big Mac price remained almost stable during the period under review, while the overall inflation amounted to 16%.

Prices 2025 vs. 2021

Comparison of % development of Big Mac prices and inflation

How did the prices of the media I looked at develop in the period from mid-2021 to early 2025?

A quarter of all the media brands studied here have not increased their subscription prices since my last analysis. The average price increase is 31%, or by 49% if I only consider the media with price increases.

But the mean values conceal a wide spread. While we see a significant reduction in prices for Aftenposten’s basic product, a minimal reduction for Perspective Daily, and unchanged prices for Bild and Die Republik, for example, the basic digital subscription of Dagens Nyheter has doubled in price and the basic offer of the Wall Street Journal is even four times more expensive.

If you place the change in Big Mac equivalents alongside the monetary price increases, it becomes clear that there can be considerable differences between price and value. For example, I recorded a price increase of 42% for the Dutch De Correspondent. But in local Big Mac units, the offer has become 11% cheaper. Overall prices in Big Mac units have risen less sharply than prices in the respective national currency.

In conclusion, the Big Mac index makes for an interesting method to compare prices across currencies and countries and could be a useful way of developing a reasonable price for a subscription in a given context. For instance, as mentioned, many digital-only start-ups have opted for a price that corresponds to the value of around one and a half Big Macs in their respective countries.

The post The Big Mac Index: a tool for comparing subscription price across the media industry appeared first on Audiencers.

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.

Founded in 2013, Contexte, a 100% digital, French-language publication, has established itself as a benchmark for understanding French and European public policy. From Paris and Brussels, its journalists dissect the legislative backstage, regulatory decisions and games of influence that shape our laws.

In early 2025, the team revised their subscription offer, aiming to provide more clarity and more value. Sacha Cayre, CMO at Contexte since May 2024, takes us behind the scenes.

> Contexte, which covers French and European policy, found that 60% of subscribers read its briefings every week but only 4% ever opened anything else. They were buying one product and ignoring the rest

> The answer was the augmented briefing: the same familiar email, with an enhanced version that links out to the deeper reporting. Rebuild the path rather than repackage the price

> External pricing consultants delivered a structure that was simpler than the old one but, in the CMO's words, too financial and not marketable enough. There was no story to tell, so Contexte started again

> Three tiers now: Essential, Advanced and Integral. Everyone gets the briefing and a directory tracking every amendment an MP tables. Alerts sit in Advanced, and AI committee debriefs in Integral

> Customers went from 1,200 in 2023 to 1,600 by early 2025, with the average basket up 1,000 euros to around 7,500. Growth has run at 25 to 40% for four years

Marion Wyss: Hello Sacha! You’ve just announced that you’ve launched a new subscription offer at Contexte. When did you start work on this and why?

Sacha Cayre: The work began before I arrived, in October 2023. The initial situation was that we had a single offer, with a highly personalized price scale based on the type and size of an organization. This ranged from NGOs with no employees to TotalEnergies or the European Parliament, with price differences of 1 to 50.

The post More clarity, more value: how Contexte overhauled their subscription offer appeared first on Audiencers.

Finding the right price for a subscription product requires a two-pronged approach: understanding the criteria that make it a “good price” (for readers and for you), and presenting it in the best possible way to your audience.

At Paris 2024 edition of The Audiencers’ Festival, Lou Grasser, Chief Digital Operation Officer at Le Monde, presented their pricing strategy and the numerous tests they’ve run to perfectly balance the two essentials above.

> Le Monde's digital subscription went from 18 euros a month in 2019 down to 9.90 and back up to 12.99. Getting there took a full-time pricing analyst and a predictive model forecasting three years out

> Cheap acquisition followed by incremental rises looked good and was not profitable. The lower tier cannibalised the more expensive one and total sales fell, which is the trap most publishers are still in

> Aggressive promotions turned out to work for retention, not acquisition. A five euro monthly offer was pulled after two months, while reworking how customer service handles leavers lifted retention by up to 50%

> Listing every benefit was counter-productive: desktop readers took in the first four, mobile readers only two. Meanwhile the barely promoted student and teacher offers were clicked seven times more than anything else

> Subscribing through Google at half price now accounts for around 30% of new subscribers, but those readers retain noticeably worse than people who sign up directly

The post Defining subscription pricing at Le Monde appeared first on Audiencers.

Discover why monthly subscribers may offer greater flexibility, pricing power, and growth potential. Refine your strategy by understanding the nuances of acquisition, retention, and revenue trends to maximize subscriber value.

The post Annual vs. Monthly Subscriptions, what drives more value? appeared first on Audiencers.