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.

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At The Atlantic, we pride ourselves in fostering an environment that abides by a guiding principle: a spirit of generosity, or, in other words, “a natural disposition in each colleague toward service and selfless conduct.” We embody this spirit throughout the product-development process by putting an emphasis on collaboration from idea conception to product launch.

This kind of collaboration requires open lines of communication, flexibility in planning, and a commitment to serving the reader, which is a goal every team at The Atlantic has in common.

In product, and especially in news product, it’s so important for every team to be rowing in the same direction. Collaboration needs to happen across the newsroom, marketing, sales/advertising, engineering, design, audience research, data science, and many other teams in order to get to a launch.

To illustrate, here’s how we launched our article-gifting feature with successful cross-functional collaboration throughout the process.

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“Our products are better when informed by the people who use them“

The Audiencers' Festival at The New York Times Building on March 15th brought together 150 digital publishing professionals to discuss everything from audience research to newsletters, engaging young audiences and maximizing on the value of registration.

To kick the day off, Gina Bulla, Executive Director Audience Research, and Mariah Craddick, Executive Director Product, shared how The Atlantic is using audience research to bring more value to readers and subscribers, with the example of their mobile app development.

What is audience research at The Atlantic?

A relatively new discipline at The Atlantic, audience research was launched in 2019 right before their digital subscription product. Audience research is part of 3 insights teams – advertising, data science and audience research. The role of the latter is to connect directly with subscribers, to bring their voice into the room when making decisions about product. For The Atlantic, it’s an incredibly important discipline as they believe products are better when informed by the people who use them.

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From the early days of market research homing in on a target audience to finding ways to incorporate user feedback throughout the development cycle, the goal was “seamless.”

For years, The Atlantic has talked about developing a specific product for institutions. Our peers in the media industry have publicly reported successful metrics that show, to various degrees, how group subscriptions play a role in their revenue growth. Additionally, our teams would often hear requests for this type of access.

We had our individual subscriptions but, until recently, there was no way for someone to buy access to The Atlantic and distribute it across an organization.

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After noticing Gina Bulla, executive director of audience research at The Atlantic, sign up to The Audiencers’ newsletter, I just had to get in touch to hear more about her role. What exactly is audience research? What type of research does her team run? And how are the findings used to increase engagement, conversion and retention at The Atlantic?

Gina, could you start by telling us about your experience and how you came to take on this role? 

The Atlantic’s Audience Research team launched in 2019, as we and so many others in the industry began forming new relationships with readers via digital subscriptions. At the time, I was working on the advertising insights side of the business, focused on helping brands understand what made The Atlantic’s audience unique.

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