Anil Chitrapu is a Senior Product Manager at Wirecutter (The New York Times), focused on audience growth, AI, and personalization.

In this article, Anil takes a closer look into the operational choices, guardrails, and tech powering Wirecutter For You, the new email that tailors article recommendations to each reader - without compromising editorial judgment or inbox trust.

Interactive map at LA Times

One of my favorite examples is from LA Times who have built interactive “places” lists, providing an excellent demonstration of Integrated Utility Design – the interactive features eliminate friction and deliver immediate value to a local audience.

Instead of a static list of top restaurants, this interactive map format transforms the article into a powerful, real-time decision-making tool.

• Eliminate user pain points

The interactive map that moves as you scroll eliminates the most common pain points of a list: location and proximity. As the user reads about Restaurant X, the map instantly highlights its location. This allows the user to judge factors like neighborhood, parking, or proximity to their current location without opening a new tab.

• Provide as much usable information as possible

For food writing, the menu description and the geographical reality are equally important. The synchronized map connects the author’s text (the food) with the real-world utility (the location), making the entire proposition easier to visualize, share, and act upon.

• Make it actionable

The design often includes action buttons—like “Visit Website,” “Call,” or “Make Reservation”—embedded directly next to the map marker. This design respects the user’s intent: they aren’t just reading, they’re planning a meal, and the article facilitates that action immediately.

• Allow for personalized browsing 

Instead of forcing a linear read (top to bottom), the user can toggle between the list and the map. A user can find a restaurant on the map first (e.g., “I need a place in Santa Monica”) and then click the marker to jump directly to the editorial review in the list, catering to different planning habits.

• Data collection

The publisher can track which areas on the map are being viewed and clicked the most. If users consistently interact with restaurants in, say, Koreatown, the editorial team gains valuable data for covering future food and neighborhood trends.

Check out the article on LA Times

Debating at DER SPIEGEL

Commenting on articles is a well-recognized way of engaging readers. But ultimately the value of conversations are diluted across the many articles discussing a single topic.

At Der Spiegel, they built a new format of content that brings value to both readers and the publisher – debating. The debate format offers users a structured and respectful platform for co-creating content, making participation feel more meaningful than a typical comment thread.

• Structured dialogue

By separating the Debatte section from regular article comments, Der Spiegel established a clear “safe space” for discussion. Strict moderation ensures the conversation is constructive, focusing on the content (E.g. horror film recommendations) and not descending into trolling or hate speech.

• Ritualized interaction

Users can vote, share their views and discover articles discussing the same topic. By creating a weekly or regular “Debatte”, the publisher creates a ritualized interaction. Loyal users return to the site not just for news, but to actively participate in the ongoing conversation, leading to high visit frequency and sustained loyalty

• User Generated Content (UGC)

For a question like “Which horror film do you recommend?”, the audience provides the content itself. This crowdsourcing approach leverages the collective expertise of thousands of readers to create a dynamic, useful, and diverse list of recommendations that a single author couldn’t replicate

Check out the debates on DER SPIEGEL

> Read more on how they built this unique format

Sub-categories at Wired

Wired’s “AI of a thousand faces” article is fantastic example of a content strategy known as Layered Storytelling. This dual “bitesize” and “full article” format is highly effective, especially for complex topics like AI, and provides distinct value to both the casual and the deeply engaged audience.

• Adaptable discovery

Each card shares a brief introduction to this ‘possible reality’, linking to an article diving deeper into the topic, accommodating the skim-reader and deep-reader equally. Skimmers can quickly browse the entire issue to see what interests them, while divers can transition to the comprehensive text with a single click, fulfilling their curiosity.

• Low barrier to entry

Complex topics, especially in tech and science, can be intimidating. The creative, interactive wrapper and bitesize snippets lower the barrier to entry. The user isn’t faced with a massive wall of text; they get an accessible, visually engaging appetizer before committing to the main course.

• Can be controlled by the user

It’s almost like a tool that the reader can control – it respects the their time and attention span by allowing them to choose their level of commitment.

Check out the article on Wired

Interactive check list at The New York Times

The NYT’s interactive checklist format is a prime example of how digital design can transform content utility into a powerful driver of audience engagement.

• Personalized utility

Any list is useful in itself, but a checklist instantly transforms the static text into a form of ‘progress’ bar (“I’ve seen 75 of 100 films”) shifting the ownership to make the content instantly more valuable and relevant to a user’s life

• Gamification

The gamification element builds a sense of accomplishment as well as a challenge to go try to watch more of the listed films. Think Duolingo and the value of their ‘goal setting’ element.

• Optimized for engagement

For the publisher, this is priceless for engagement – unlike a static article where a user scrolls once and leaves, the checklist requires multiple actions (reading, clicking, checking, scrolling, filtering), increasing the amount of time spent on page.

• Social sharing potential

The team have also made sure to build a personalized list summary at the end that readers can download and share. It makes me think of Spotify Wrapped and how users are proud of their ‘performance’.

Check out the article on The New York Times

Interactive health quiz at The Telegraph

This article from The Telegraph uses an Assessment Calculator format, one of the most effective types of interactive content for health and lifestyle publications. This structure is designed to transform complex, sometimes intimidating, health metrics into a simple, personalized, and actionable score.

• Instant personalized self-assessment

Users input personal data (age, diet, exercise, habits) and receive an immediate, unique result. This moves the experience from reading a generic article (e.g., “7 Ways to Get Healthier”) to getting an assessment score (“Your health age is X years old”), creating a powerful, personal “hook.”

• Actionable insights (not just information)

The interactive element forces the user to actively consider their habits one by one. By showing the input directly affecting the output, the quiz implicitly educates the user on which behaviors have the largest impact on their health, making the advice feel more tangible and relevant.

• Conversion potential

Not in this case, but health calculators are also prime candidates for strategic gating. The publisher can ask for an email address to “receive your full, personalized health report” or “save your score and track your progress.” This turns a casual visitor into a valuable, qualified lead at a high conversion rate.

Check out the article on The Telegraph

Julien Ancel is the founder of Anthm, a gaming platform designed for media organizations wanting to adopt the gaming strategy that revolutionized the New York Times. However, it's important to stress that the success of this strategy is not based solely on the fame of the New York Times, but on the meticulous application of sophisticated and innovative game mechanics, detailed in the article.

It’s 2024, and the media landscape is reinventing itself by adopting an inescapable trend: the integration of games into our audience loyalty strategies.

A pioneer in this approach, The New York Times began its adventure in 2009, before acquiring Wordle in February 2022. This popular game, in which participants must guess a hidden word in six attempts, attracts millions of users every month.

The value of gamification for their wider strategy is clear from the data shared in their 2023 investor report. According to the document, The New York Times recorded over 8 billion plays over the year, indicating that players are significantly more engaged with news than non-players. Jonathan Knight, head of games at The New York Times, also asserts in an interview, “Those who play our games are much more loyal to the news than those who don’t.”

The secret? The New York Times has captured the essence of human pleasure, turning each game into a dopamine-fueled exploration of our desire for discovery. Let’s find out together how they harness this powerful engine of engagement.

Dopamine, the driving force

To find out, we need to look at what drives our curiosity. Specifically, dopamine, a neurotransmitter often reduced to its role as a reward hormone, but which is in fact the fuel of anticipation and curiosity. Understanding its impact is crucial to understanding why games are so captivating.

It’s everywhere…

• Tinder: the “swipe” gesture and the excitement of discovering new profiles
• Duolingo: the series of consecutive days, or “daily streaks”, that motivate regular learning
• TikTok/Instagram/Facebook: endless content scrolling
• Coingecko: regular consultation of the value of one’s crypto-currency portfolio
• Mobile games: the instant rewards and easy levels at the start that encourage you to play again and again

These examples illustrate how dopamine drives us back to activities that pique our interest and reward our curiosity, often without an immediate goal.

Games and social networks use this dynamic not only for instant gratification, but also to feed our desire for discovery and achievement. It’s a powerful strategy for keeping users engaged.

Like the dopamine-champion apps, The New York Times implements several strategies to boost community engagement.

> You’ll also enjoy: Wordle and beyond: How games are impacting publisher newsletters

The New York Times engagement strategy deciphered through the “Hook” model.

The New York Time’s engagement strategy, with games like Wordle, can be examined through Nir Eyal’s “Hook model”. This model helps to understand how these games become daily rituals, captivating and retaining users.

1. Triggers

Triggers are stimuli that prompt users to perform an action. They can be external, such as notifications or promotions, or internal, linked to emotions and personal habits. To be effective, a trigger must create a routine during which the user tends to act automatically in response to the stimuli to which he or she is exposed.

Applied to the New York Times:

• Daily routine (visual countdowns + loss aversion)
• Social pressure with your network asking you for your score on the daily grid
• Marketing, and creating FOMO – wanting to accomplish so you don’t miss out, bringing people to NYT, notifications

2. Action

The action, in the Hook model, is the task that the user is encouraged to perform. It must be simple enough for the user to accomplish with a minimum of effort, yet engaging and challenging enough to satisfy their expectation.

• Simple rules that make the game accessible and don’t require a huge amount of effort
• Simplified, clean design
• Engaging with the right level of difficulty
• Visual indicators that facilitate puzzle solving

3. The reward

Rewards are what the user gets after performing the action. In an effective model, these rewards must meet expectations and reinforce the user’s commitment. They can be tangible, such as points or badges, or intangible, such as a feeling of satisfaction.

• Instant feedback
• End-of-game feedback, sense of accomplishment
• Social status – ability to share success with others

4. Investment

Investment refers to the time, data, effort or money that users are willing to devote after receiving a reward. This investment increases the likelihood that the user will return, as it reinforces the personal value that the user associates with the product…

• Continuous improvement – being able to see your progress
• Sense of belonging and being part of a community

The rules of the game have changed; now it’s your turn!

As the media landscape of 2024 continues to transform with the integration of games into loyalty strategies, The New York Times sets itself up as an example of this revolution.

The success of Wordle and other games is no accident, but the result of a deep understanding of the mechanisms that govern user engagement.

Using examples from everyday life to illustrate the effect of games on our behavior, this article has demystified the principles that make them attractive and rewarding.

Integrating these mechanisms is not a matter of copying formulas, but of understanding their principles in order to use them to best effect.

The New York Times has taken the plunge, turning playful engagement into a serious and profitable business. You can succeed with this strategy too. Now that you’ve got the first bricks, get in the game.

Newsletters continue to be a valuable tool for cutting through the noise of shared online spaces and engaging audiences in direct and meaningful ways. To learn from a couple of experts in the field, Chartbeat’s Brad Streicher sat down with Elaine Piniat of Reuters and Maya Neria of The New York Times at The Audiencers Festival in New York.

They talked about how their roles help bridge editorial and business teams, how newsletter growth correlates to site KPIs, and what they find challenging about their work.

Can you start by walking us through your roles? 

Maya: I’m the Director of Product for Messaging. Messaging here refers to both push and email. Our work is really to be a bridge in many ways between the business side and the newsroom with email strategy.

We have over 150 newsletters that span lots of different categories. They also vary very much in format. Certain newsletters are really all about the inbox and very much about journalism in your inbox. Other formats are really focused on optimizing engagement with our on-site journalism. We live in a world where there is really limited real estate, especially on Mobile, so we really see emails as an extension of the homepage and a way to personalize the homepage for readers.

Elaine: I’m the Newsletter Audience and Revenue Strategy Manager at Reuters. My role is a bridge role with all of the different departments working on newsletters–Editorial, Product, Design, Sales, Marketing, Data–and I essentially act as a product manager. When I started at Reuters, I was the only employee working full time on newsletters, and now we have a cross-functional team that’s made up of individuals from all these departments and we’ve hired a newsletter editor to be my editorial counterpart.

Editorial and sales are the two departments that I work the most with. On the editorial side of things, I work with the team on building templates, A/B testing, surveys, and communicating those findings. And on the sales side, I’m working with planners and sellers on pricing, data, and providing audience info for pitches.

At Reuters, our goal is to attract professionals in the areas of sustainable business, auto, health, and legal. Essentially, what we do is we’ll have deep coverage with a specific topic, and we’ll marry that to a newsletter. 

What correlation have you seen between newsletter growth and hitting key metrics on the site itself?

Maya: I think email plays a bigger and bigger role in engaging readers that would have otherwise come organically via search. And we’ve seen huge success in terms of email being a situation lever for folks. We’ve done a lot of analyses that show real incremental impact when it comes to both conversion and retention. And that’s true for both emails that drive readers to site as well as emails that are all about inbox journalism. We tend to subscribe to a philosophy that our subscribers should have no friction so our subscriber-only newsletter portfolio is really about the most premium feel in the inbox. We’re not trying to get them to click into the site by design.

More of our free offerings tend to try to drive people to the site and we have a smart meter that will serve a paywall when it makes sense. For KPIs on the newsletter side, we look at email clickthrough rate as a leading indicator. We then track weekly active users, and we’re also tracking conversion and retention. So every single time we launch a newsletter, every single A/B test that we’re making on major formats of newsletters, we’re really able to test those lagging organizational KPIs and be able to attribute real email impact to those.

Elaine: For Reuters, when I first started our focus was on the surface-level metrics – open rate, click through rate – and to find more meaning in newsletters we transitioned over time to site metrics. We’re setting goals against sessions and estimating revenue from users who click from newsletters to the site. We’re paying closer attention to that impact. Clicks and sessions are key for us. Over the last two years clicks have grown 39% and pageviews have grown 50% so the growth is there. 

We’re also seeing that newsletter subscribers are much more active on site than the average visitor. They have 25% more engaged time on site, 75% more pages per user, and a lower bounce rate. So all of these metrics that are kind of core to measuring engagement and loyalty are higher with our newsletter subscribers, and we’re still looking for ways to measure loyalty in a more meaningful way, but we see the value there in our newsletter subscribers.

How do you conceptualize new newsletters?

Elaine: We consider this as a Newsletter Cycle, where these things kind of happen all at once but can also be considered as steps to work through.

• Grow the list of newsletter subscribers, whether through smart sign up points, social media, outreach, etc
• Engage audience once you launch, with a welcome series, strong subject lines, compelling content
• Of course, you’ll inevitably lose users overtime – those who unsubscribe or through list clean ups
• So you have to figure out how you can re-engage users with re-engagement emails for instance
• And ultimately optimize the newsletter itself through testing, analyzing data, surveys
• …before going back to growing the list

What tips do you have for publishers who want to start adding personalization to their newsletters?

Maya:  I think the real opportunity is how you match the audience and the content, and that’s where we’re really investing our resources. For instance, we believe geopersonalization is a strategy worth investing in, and have recently launched “Your places: Extreme weather”.

Obviously that’s very resource intensive so we’re also developing models that are not about one-to-one personalization but one-to-many. So even just saying, “What does a registered user get versus a subscriber?”, or on the geopersonalization side, “What can we offer international readers” and that’s a much easier personalization problem.

So, going back to that example of a subscriber-only newsletter that’s not really about driving readers to site, you can create a version of that newsletter that’s all about driving people to site, and it’s the articles that were referenced in that email, but now in a digest preview that you send to the registered list. It’s a way of doing this that’s not as difficult to pull off as one-to-one.

We’ve talked a lot about some of the successes that we’ve seen, but I think we would be remiss to not address challenges that you’ve seen in your roles as well.

Elaine: Getting resources can sometimes be a challenge. Newsletters are a small piece of what the rest of the team does so when we have a vision for our newsletters, we may not be able to do it in the time span that we were hoping to.

Another is the accuracy and truth behind data. When it comes to open rates, when it comes to clickthrough rates, and, if you’re using a tool like SailThru, metrics that now filter out Apple MPP and bots, how much do we trust those metrics? How do we disseminate those metrics? Do we share that information, and when do we share it? We don’t want to discourage people who are working on newsletters when they see the truth behind some of the metrics.

Maya: One is figuring out what the business needs are and what the user needs are and how you get those people aligned. There are times when the business wants to guide as many people to the site as they can, and if you’re working with a newsletter editor, they want to make sure that they have the best journalism in the inbox. Navigating those tensions is really important.

I think the other thing from a product perspective is how do you not get stuck in a world where you’re just doing incremental improvements–small A/B tests that have 1%, 2%, or 3% lifts– and give yourself the space to think bigger and actually get into a larger, potentially riskier area. I think that’s where we are with geo-personalization, both the infrastructure that we have to build to support that and the culture that we need to change.  Figuring out how you actually give your team the space to innovate there is really challenging, because it’s much easier to just continue to do A/B tests and just get a little bit better and a little bit better.

The New York Times and its games ventures

Let’s start with some context.

The acquisition of Wordle, born out of a romantic gesture, marked a significant moment in The New York Times’ approach to diversifying its content. Between 1942 (When The Crossword was first printed in The New York Times) and 2023, The New York Times has introduced a variety of new games, each captivating audiences in its own way.

They strive to “offer puzzles for all skill levels that everyone can enjoy playing every day,”

Their latest offering, “Connections,” has already garnered attention in the media world.

From the tactile pleasure of solving a crossword on print in 1942 to the digital satisfaction of receiving “Genius” status on Spelling Bee in 2023, it’s pretty wild.

The New York Times’ gaming ventures aim to engage, entertain, and, in many ways, educate. As we delve deeper, it becomes clear that games, just like news, have the power to shape narratives, form communities and stand the test of time.

> You’ll also enjoy: The New York Times dynamic paywall analyzed

Community building and engagement

In the realm of games, community isn’t just an afterthought.

Based on analysis from the Conversations Data Science team at Twitter, there were ~500,000 tweets per day about Wordle at one point.

The New York Times understands this dynamic, creating gaming content that not only entertains but also nurtures a sense of belonging. In recognizing the global nature of its audience, The New York Times’ crosswords group introduced their first word-free game: Tiles.

According to AdWeek in an article from Insider in 2019, it was created from the request of users. The Times Games Expansions team, “noticed that users were writing in late at night asking the company for a game that would help them zone out,”

The emergence of a dedicated “Games Twitter” and even spin-off accounts like “Not a Spelling Bee Word” exemplifies the vibrancy of The New York Times gaming community. Along with forums too.

The New York Times has created a hub for players to converse about strategies, share achievements and celebrate the essence of gaming. Moreover, including features like leaderboards which introduce a competitive edge, motivating players to refine their skills and deepen their involvement.

Speaking of competitive edge, how many of y’all had a Wordle Slack channel at one point?

Gameplay newsletter

A notable addition to The New York Times engagement initiatives is Gameplay, a newsletter specifically tailored for gaming enthusiasts.

Newsletter format

Typically, the newsletter follows this format:

• Introduction from the writer.
• A tease to a larger story: “Read more on Gameplay”.
• Wordle Weekly Recap, with a link to today’s Wordle.
• Brain Tickler, with the answer at the bottom of the newsletter.
• House ad. They’ve been featuring The Upshot.
• Spelling Bee puzzle with a link to play online. Also a shoutout to join today’s forum.
• A mention of the Crossword featuring one of the clues.
• Advertisement — but it appeared blank.
• Community Chatter with screenshots from various parts you can engage with The New York Times community (Twitter, comments, etc.).
• “Here’s More From Us” section with various Games stories.
• Footer section with options to subscribe to New York Times Games, the answer to the Brain Tickler and a CTA to sign up for Easy Mode — a newsletter where you can receive the “easy version” of one of the hardest crossword puzzles of the week.

> How DN leveraged gamification to attract a younger audience, and got almost 35,000 new registered users

When does gameplay send?

This weekly newsletter goes out in the morning, likely local time for the reader. You know… when you might most likely be gaming it up.

It may vary depending on if there is any Send Time Optimization or testing for when to send the newsletter going on.

Why a games newsletter?

There are likely a variety of reasons, and these are not confirmed by The New York Times, but here are some thought starters:

The New York Times leverages games like Wordle, not just as standalone products but as integral parts of their subscription and newsletter strategy.

Wordle was played more than 2 billion times in 2022, according to The New York Times.

Wordle and its companions aren’t just games; they’re engagement tools.

A win-win for both readers and The New York Times: while readers are entertained, The Times sees a financial upside (we’ll get more to that later).

By embedding games in other newsletters, the possibility of upselling or cross-selling other products becomes more palpable, especially when the user is engaged.

Here is an example of Spelling Bee being mentioned in the October 7 edition of The Morning, The New York Times’ flagship newsletter with over 17 million subscribers, according to NiemanLab.

‍There are also links to the news quiz, the Mini Crossword and other games.

Emails, specifically newsletters, can be more than information channels; they can be community hubs.

‍The New York Times’ gaming page and Gameplay newsletter encourage interactions, with readers sharing scores, discussing strategies and maybe even providing feedback on games.

By offering insights from the creators or puzzle editors along with gaming news, further establishes The New York Times as a trusted voice in the gaming sphere.

‍This specialized content, combined with an engaged community, creates a dynamic ecosystem.

Readers might arrive for Wordle but are introduced to a universe of content, keeping them informed, entertained, and, most importantly, engaged.

Financial aspects and strategy

The New York Times’ strategic evolution showcases its transition from traditional journalism to a multifaceted digital platform.

New York Times Cooking, the acquisition of The Athletic and the establishment of a dedicated gaming section are all reflections of this broader vision.

“We believe continued strong execution of our bundle strategy positions us to be more resilient to external market dynamics while driving sustainable value creation. We are proud of the progress we are making to build a larger and more profitable company, which in turn allows us to continue to do the most ambitious, high quality journalism across an ever broadening range of topics and formats.”

Meredith Kopit Levien, The New York Times President and CEO, mentioned in the second-quarter 2023 press release

It was reported that there were ~3.3 million bundle and multi-product subscribers in the second quarter of 2023.

Historical context on pricing

In a strategic shift in 2011, The New York Times, heeding the changing tides of the digital era, boldly introduced its paywall. The move, initially viewed with skepticism given the prevalent culture of free digital content, proved to be a game-changer.

By the years 2017-2018, their digital-only subscription revenues increased by 18% YoY, reaching $401 million. CNN, in 2020, reported their decision to increase this subscription price for the first time. The increase, 13%, took it from $15 to $17 every four weeks.

Current subscription landscape

‍In Q2 2023, The New York Times reported 9.88 million subscribers across print and digital products, including 9.19 digital-only subscribers, an increase from 8.41 million digital-only subscribers in Q2 2022.

An interesting observation, pointing to the reference in the Q2 2023 press release: More than a third of the nearly 10 million subscribers are bundle or multi-product subscribers.

‍If you try to sign up for New York Times Cooking individually, you’ll notice the push for All Access at the top, and having to scroll down to sign up only for New York Times Cooking.

‍Total revenue for the quarter was $590.9 million, a 6.3% YoY increase, with digital-only subscription revenues contributing a significant $269.8 million (a 13% YoY rise).

The 13% rise in digital subscription revenues during the second quarter was primarily attributed to a growing number of subscribers transitioning from introductory promotional prices to higher rates. Additionally, there were price increases implemented on tenured subscribers for digital news and Games, according to The New York Times.

The reported Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for digital-only subscribers for Q2 2023 was $9.15.

When it comes to subscription choices, The New York Times offers some options:

• All Access: Includes News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic. The current offer is $1/week for the first six months, and then $25 every four weeks. The first year total comes to $174.
• Individual subscriptions: Options include NYT Cooking at $1.25/week or $40/year and other product-specific subscriptions.

‍Notably, subscribing to New York Times Cooking, Games, Wirecutter and The Athletic individually would cost $153.88 for the first year, making it slightly cheaper than the All Access bundle priced at $174 for the same period.

It’s important to note that you wouldn’t have “News” access, but it doesn’t appear you can subscribe to just News based on their Digital Subscriptions FAQs page.

This pricing strategy raises a pertinent question: shouldn’t bundling offer better savings? Probably, but the only way to get access to News via subscription would be through the All Access bundle, placing a heavy emphasis on its value.

Additionally, these offers might be subject to variations based on promotional activities, purchase histories and more. Moreover, specific deals seem to target only new customers, excluding existing ones.

Another observation is that it appears the Basic Digital Access subscription is being phased out, and they’re pushing for everyone to have All Access since you would then be added to all of their products.

Looking ahead

From All Access to subscribing to specific products, The New York Times capitalizes on personalizing the reader experience. Newsletters play a pivotal role in this, likely segmenting audiences based on interests and ensuring the content (games included) aligns with what readers are most keen to engage with.

With the goal of hitting 15 million subscribers by 2027, The New York Times is ambitiously leveraging its pricing, product testing and diversification strategies.

Games in newsletters: strategy or trend?

As digital media continuously seeks innovative ways to capture and retain audience attention, the integration of games into newsletters emerges as more than a fleeting trend.

It’s a deliberate strategy aimed at fostering active engagement.

Newsletters aren’t merely opened — they’re oftentimes interacted with, transforming passive readers into actively engaged subscribers. And games adds to this immersive experience.

And it’s not just The New York Times diving into this territory. Other media outlets like The Washington Post have unveiled game-centric content such as their newsletter, Game Break, featuring Crossword, On the Record news quiz, and their brand-new game, Keyword.

‍Yet as more media houses delve into this realm, a critical question arises…

How impactful are games for these media companies?

An Axios report illuminates the topic further, highlighting that around “35% of the users who subscribe to the Times’ gaming subscription service now cite Wordle as the reason they subscribed,” as mentioned by Zoe Bell, executive producer at NY Times Games.

What makes this strategy particularly interesting is the feedback loop it creates. You may sign up specifically for Wordle, but then you might starting receiving the Gameplay newsletter, you then start playing Spelling Bee because of an article you read from the newsletter, and on and on.

In a nutshell, games may draw readers to the platform, then in turn the newsletters, and the newsletters enhance the gaming and content experience, leading to a, hopefully, more engaged and active subscriber.

This active engagement likely translates to higher retention rates, more opportunities for monetization and a more loyal subscriber base.

This creates a habit. And The New York Times seems to aim to be a part of your daily routine, and if it’s not reading the news, it’s playing the crossword, cooking a recipe, etc.

The growing significance of games in media

Games have always been a source of entertainment, but their role in today’s media landscape has grown.

Games was played almost 4 billion times in 2022 including The Mini Crossword, which was played more than 500 million times, according to The New York Times annual report.

Recognizing their potential as strategic tools, media giants like The New York Times have adeptly leveraged games for business growth, community engagement and revenue diversification.

The New York Times foray into this domain showcases the tangible benefits games bring to the media world:

• Acquisition and retention: Just one game can be a game-changer. Take Wordle, for instance. Its widespread popularity drew “tens of millions” to The New York Times, leading the media company to record its best quarter for net subscriber additions to Games.
• Revenue diversification: Games, with their potential to captivate millions, present a refreshing revenue stream. As The New York Times reports over 9 million digital-only subscribers, games stand out as a beacon, counterbalancing potentially stagnant advertising revenues.
• Enhanced engagement: The Wordle phenomenon wasn’t just a one hit wonder. Its ripple effect heightened interest in The New York Times’ broader gaming portfolio, subsequently likely boosting and enriching subscriber engagement levels.

Yet, the gaming pivot isn’t unique to The New York Times.

Other media contenders, like The Washington Post, Morning Brew, Vox and more, have too integrated game-inspired segments into their offerings — mainly newsletters.

This raises an intriguing question: Are these companies yielding results from games?

Wrapping up

The digital media landscape is ever-evolving, and the emergence of games within it is both fascinating and indicative of the industry’s resilience and adaptability.

Characterized not only by successes but also by the willingness to experiment.

For example: Digits. A pretty fun game based on numbers which was in beta but didn’t make it to the broader audience. This experimental approach underlines the company’s endeavor to innovate, even if every experiment doesn’t result in a widespread release.

This prototyping process was created by The Times’ Games Expansion team, launched in ~2017. It’s charter according to The New York Times is to: “create games that will challenge and delight Times readers in new ways for the next hundred years.”

With this in mind, looking back at the trajectory of the New York Times is pretty wild.

The New York Times was the last major metropolitan daily to offer a crossword ($), and now it has an entire team dedicated to Games. Once a latecomer to the crossword scene to now being at the forefront of digital gaming in journalism.

Yet, as media giants like The New York Times and others innovate, diversifying their offerings and blending the boundaries between news and entertainment, the question remains…

Is this a sustainable shift in digital journalism?

The success stories tied to games like Wordle not only reiterate the power of innovation but also underscore the potential of marrying traditional journalism with interactive media. Such a blend has proven to be a win-win, creating value for both media houses and their subscribers.

Other media giants, like The Washington Post and Morning Brew, are recognizing this potential and tailoring their offerings to resonate with a digitally-savvy, game-loving audience. As the trend gains traction, it will be interesting to witness how other media entities adapt, innovate, and, possibly, elevate the entire industry standard.

Will games remain a key player in the media’s toolkit? Or will they go back into the background as another innovation takes center stage?

Only time will reveal the full impact of this evolution. But for now, we can sit back, play a game of Wordle, and watch the story unfold.

As part of a reorganization of The New York Times marketing department, Perrine Pavageau took on the role of "Program Manager" (PMO), a role at the crossroads of strategic vision and execution (read our article introducing her role here). Her main objective: to put in place operational mechanisms to ensure the success of marketing strategies. It's a function that answers the questions "how do we do it?" a contact person for teams to turn to express and overcome their organizational challenges. 

In this series of articles, Perrine recounts 5 operational projects carried out in this role for The New York Times.

As The New York Times revisited its paywall strategy, a specialist media strategy team was created in-house – expertise that had previously been completely outsourced. Why this decision?

• Firstly, the cost. Working only with agencies could limit the work to “scopes”. With The New York Times strategy in the midst of reform at the time, greater flexibility was needed. As Janis Huang, VP Subscription Growth, says, “Working with an agency required a lot of work to convey our strategy, but we were in the process of redefining our strategy.”

• Also, the desire to rethink the marketing campaigns for The New York Times, which were mainly made up of banners and emails. According to Janis, the answer to the question “What should The New York Times Marketing look like to the world?” was to bring the campaigns to life, for a stronger emotional impact. This could be done with new media such as audio, radio, TV or outdoor.

• Finally, there was a desire to measure the “brand affinity” impact of these new formats on specific brand attributes.

The New York Times therefore switched to a hybrid model. Experts in digital and traditional media were recruited to join a team called “Marketing & Media Strategy”. The New York Times chose to bring in experienced leaders to guide the strategy and establish capabilities from the ground up. While still using agencies, especially for brand campaigns or specific expertise.

My first project as Program Manager was to review the campaign execution processes to integrate the media team’s work. This was called the “Interaction model“. A new term, which has become part of everyday language.

An Interaction Model is a framework that defines the roles and responsibilities of each team, strengthens collaboration, and brings transparency and alignment. For The New York Times, the objectives were:

• Minimize disruption from reorganization

• Provide a common structure, understood by all

• Improve visibility throughout projects

• Establish a structured and positive collaboration

• Reduce operational risks

A bit like an internal consultant, I went through the following steps:

1. Listening to existing processes and challenges
2. Defining a framework that included phases, roles, interactions and deliverables
3. Obtaining validation from the teams and management
4. Integrating the framework into the templates of project management tool
5. Communicating and evangelizing the framework to ensure adoption

It included:

A high-level framework for monthly, quarterly or annual planning. The objective: that teams anticipate together, and are aligned on the priorities and necessary resources.

An end-to-end campaign framework with all steps and interactions.

Here are the points that really made an impact, in my opinion:

• Clearly naming each phase – like in agile. It doesn’t sound like much, but it helps. When I said to management “we have a sticking point in the media build phase”, they knew what I was talking about

• An “official” kickoff phase followed by a brief for the creative and media teams. This avoided projects being launched on an impromptu request. And everyone was briefed in the same way

• Creative & Media checkins so that creative teams and media planners would work together, just like in an agency. Imagine: the creative team starts with an illustration-based concept, but the media team ends up recommending audio. These teams need to communicate upstream to have time to look at each other’s progress

• Sharing results with the creative teams, so that they understand what worked and what didn’t. Through this, the creatives have started to acquire a business language and a better understanding of the issues at hand.

The challenge was to get this framework adopted. We quickly had to make specific versions for different types of campaigns or business lines. The 3 weeks of Concept & Planning were not always possible with the increasing pressure on the pace of promotions. And not all projects needed an innovative media plan. In contrast, Brand Campaigns had a much longer Concept & Planning phase.

For me, what has kept these interaction patterns going was:

• Management support 

• The Program Management function, which guaranteed their adoption

• Daily stand-ups with the project teams. They allowed us to discuss the status of each phase, the blocking points and the dependencies

Today, the teams still rely on a system of Interaction Models, which have of course evolved over time, constantly being called into question according to structural changes and company objectives.

> To add to your reading list: The New York Times dynamic paywall model, analyzed

 

In brief: 
- The NYT has developed a dynamic metered model that’s optimized for two metrics simultaneously - engagement and conversion to subscription 
- Although this model is complex and not something that every publisher can afford to build in-house, there are lessons to be learned
- Registration as a soft conversion step, developing numerous levers for value creation and not worrying too much about bypassing are just some of the strategies you can apply to your own digital model

In the beginning…

Back in March 2011, The New York Times did something that very few dared to do at the time. They blocked content online with a paywall. 

“5 Reasons Why The New York Times Paywall Will Fail (And Why It’s Really Dumb)”

“The New York Times’ paywall is doomed to fail”

*There were likely plenty more opinions like the above at the time but, let’s be honest, they’ve likely changed their mind since! 

Whatever people’s views on the matter, The New York Times was facing a crisis – ad revenue in freefall, income from print at an all time low, and online content disrupting the news business. It was time for a digital transformation. The start of a process to become subscription-first. 

At the start, The New York Times employed a metered strategy whereby readers could access a quota of 20 free articles a month before being blocked by the paywall. The idea here was that traffic from occasional visitors could be maintained, whilst more engaged readers would hit the article limit and be encouraged to subscribe.

This is the value in a metered paywall model – you allow for content discovery and engagement prior to presenting the paywall, helping to find the balance between frustration and engagement. 

Today is a very different story for The New York Times…

After acquiring The Athletic, The New York Times achieved its 2025 goal of 10 million subscribers a few years early, in February 2022, setting a new target of 15 million by 2027. 

The question then turns to how. 

How have the NYT gone from employing a ‘doomed’ strategy to running a successful premium model with over 10 million subscribers?

According to Rohit Supekar, Data Analyst at the NYT, there are two central reasons for this success: 

• Continuous testing, improvement and development of their premium strategy over the years
• But, most importantly, the publisher has moved from a one-size-fits-all approach to a dynamic metered model, driven by data

I.e. The New York Times paywall personalizes the meter limit to the reader. 

Dynamic metering at The New York Times

The engagement funnel towards subscription is composed of 3 stages: 

1. Unregistered, anonymous users arrive on the site and are presented with x number of free articles. 
2. After reaching this limit, the user is blocked by a registration wall and asked to create a free account in exchange for access to additional articles. 
3. Thanks to registration, activity can now be linked to the user’s custom reader ID with data being collected to help the publisher better understand this user’s current appetite for the NYT content. With this information, the dynamic model offers x number of free articles before presenting the paywall – x being a number that is determined optimal based on the registered user’s level of engagement.

How does this dynamic model work? 

This dynamic paywall strategy has been optimized for two metrics simultaneously. Specifically:

• Reader engagement
• The number of subscription generated by the paywall

As usual for any conversion strategy, it’s about balancing frustration and engagement. 

Increase the meter limit and your users will be more engaged. However, fewer readers will reach the paywall and be frustrated enough to convert. 

Conversely, if you keep the meter limit too low, you may have more registered members being exposed to the paywall, but these users haven’t been engaged enough to want to convert – i.e. too much frustration. 

Engagement is valuable and you should continuously seek to increase it. 

But the right amount of frustration is what’s going to encourage conversions and turn engagement into revenue. 

To find this balance, the model prescribes meter limits from a set of options, taking into consideration the user’s propensity to subscribe and their level of engagement. 

What can you take away from The New York Times’ dynamic paywall model? 

Nor everyone is as big as The NYT (that’s for certain) and developing this dynamic model in-house is pretty inaccessible for most publishers. Having said this, there are lessons to be learned to apply to your own strategy. 

1. Registration as a soft conversion step 

Registration (free account creation) has been a great asset to the publisher’s subscription acquisition efforts, increasing conversion rates by more than 40% according to The New York Times 2022 annual report. 

But the NYT aren’t the only ones to benefit from this strategy – in fact, increasingly more publishers of all sizes are seeing the benefits of this soft conversion step prior to the paywall. 

For instance, the data below from two of Poool’s clients demonstrates the huge increase in conversion rates for registered members compared to anonymous visitors. 

This didn’t require an expensive in-house model. Instead, the publishers segmented their audience based on level of engagement to build conversion journeys that found the best balance between frustration and engagement. 

Paris Match, for instance, presents less engaged users with a registration wall to help them discover more content and collect data to better understand their behavior. For ‘Fan’ readers however, who are highly more engaged, a hard paywall blocks content and requires them to subscribe. 

How to fully maximize registration – The NYT not only registers their users, but also leads them through an onboarding journey to increase engagement, such as encouraging newsletter sign-up and app downloads, just as they’d do with new subscribers. 

2. Develop multiple levers for value creation 

Whilst a subscription model will bring the most value to your business, you can do like the New York Times and establish numerous, synergistic revenue streams that seek to gradually increase customer lifetime monetization.

Anonymous users – for readers that have just arrived on your site (or are yet to create an account), you can firstly ensure that they accept cookies and then monetize from advertising.

Registered members – product driven engagement and first-party data collection will mean registered users support both ad and subscription revenue streams.

Single product subscribers – recurring, predictable revenue stream from your subscribers is what’s going to bring the most value. However, the key is to put significant time and effort into churn reduction to maximize customer lifetime value. 

Bundle and multi-product subscribers – (full access to two or more digital products) with bundles, publishers can increase conversion and retention rates by providing a wider variety of value under a single umbrella.

3. Bypassing isn’t all that bad, there’s other things to think about 

To give context to this point, The New York Times employs a frontal paywall blocking method, meaning that it’s fairly simple to bypass their wall. 

This begs the question of why one of the most successful digital publishers would employ a blocking method that results in an easy-to-bypass wall? 

In fact, the answer is quite simple – because there’s a lot more at stake when it comes to paywall blocking methods and other factors are more important to consider than bypassing. 

For instance, frontal blocking methods pose significantly less risk to SEO performance as all content is sent to the page, whether the user has access or not. 

What’s more, it’s worth bearing in mind that the users who do bypass your paywall are perhaps never likely to subscribe anyway. Instead, you should focus on the most important segment of your audience – those who are the most engaged and wouldn’t bypass your paywall anyway. These are your most valuable resource and, by employing a flexible model that performs well in terms of SEO and user experience, you can maximize the value that they bring to your business.