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Featured Post | Revenue

What the Hot Pod acquisition signals for Vox Media

There is no doubt the media industry can be pretty cutthroat. Publishers are always looking for new ways to generate revenue and compete with big tech, which dominates the digital advertising market.

Increasingly, media companies are diversifying revenue through subscriptions. So, when news broke that Vox Media acquired the Hot Pod newsletter, many focused on the fact that this would be The Verge’s first paid-for product. But there’s more to it. This is a story of friendship, partnership, trust, and serendipity – all of which form a strong foundation for growth.  

According to The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, the idea to acquire Hot Pod came about because it’s founder Nicholas Quah decided it was time to move on. Quah took on a full-time position as a podcast critic on Vulture, a Vox Media title, and was ready to shut down the baby he’d birthed back in 2014. But Patel had other ideas.

“Rather than just shut down Hot Pod, I suggested Nick sell it to Vox,” explains Patel. “It was an ideal opportunity. We like Nick. We like Hot Pod. And Nick knows us, he knows our work, and he trusts us with the product that he built. It seemed like the natural home for Hot Pod. I’m not sure a paid product on Verge would have happened otherwise. The pieces just fell together.”

Learning curve

This new acquisition, which increases Vox Media’s growing arsenal of brands, wasn’t purely philanthropic – after all, they have a business to run. Patel says The Verge team had been thinking about moving into paid product for some time. It was all about finding the right product, at the right time.

“Nick’s legacy Is strong. So, we have the right product and the right audience” says Patel. “This will help us learn how to deal with a paid product, without the challenge of having to build the product as well and verify two things at once.

“We have a lot to learn, but we are looking at this as a test. When we have more experience in this area, we can create new paid products down the line.”

Another key piece in the puzzle was Ashley Carman, senior Verge reporter, who will take over as lead writer of Hot Pod. Carman is a respected name in the industry, thanks to her essential reportage of podcasting and audio.

“Ashley turns up in Hot Pod all the time, as she is one of the best podcast reporters,” says Patel. “Plus, she has worked with Nick in the past, so there is a lot of inbuilt trust and the audience know her. This means the transition should be seamless, which is another potential risk that is lowered. We wouldn’t have done this deal without her.”

Value proposition

Trust is a word that comes up time and time again when talking to Patel. It’s clear that this is one of the reasons The Verge has amassed a loyal audience of over 50 million. That and the fact it delivers award-winning content – for free. Content across all of Vox Media – including The Verge, Recode, Polygon and more – has been free to access since its launch a decade ago. (Though about a year and a half ago, they began soliciting reader contributions to help support their journalism.) The company merged with New York, which does have subscription-based brands, in 2019.

The combined media organization boasts a roster of fan favorites, reaching audiences obsessed with tech, gaming, music, food, lifestyle and – of course – the city that never sleeps. It has also been building up its roster of newsletters and a formidable slate of podcasts. The Hot Pod acquisition adds another brand with deep insider knowledge that fans trust, which the company believes they will pay for.

“We have a very large, free audience at The Verge. And we are proud of that” says Patel. “They will continue to be well served with free content. But in addition, we will offer Hot Pod, which is a great product.

Vox plans to keep the subscription price for the newsletter at $7 per month. However, it is offering paid current subscribers a three-month subscription to New York magazine, which Quah also works for. So, what does Patel think The Verge audience will make of this new paid-for product?

“We realize you can’t just charge for more stuff. You have to charge for content that is useful and valuable. We think Ashley can deliver a lot of value that is worth paying for.”

Growth plan

Patel says they have a load of new ideas for Hot Pod, such as reviews of software and services that the podcast industry runs on, more features, and a broader focus on technology – rather than just podcasting. But first they plan on managing the transition in a way that ensures the audience feels “cared for.”

“Over time we will make changes, with a focus on improving user experience,” he explains. “Hot Pod is already a must read. We want to make it a definitive must read.”

“Verge has a huge team, with 70-plus people in the newsroom behind us. So, we can bring new, exciting things to Hot Pod. But before we start instituting change, we are going to prove we deserve the audience and their money.”

Open ecosystem

After all, bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes taking an independent, trusted product and giving it big backing turns out to be the beginning of the end. Hot Pod’s new host, Carmen can attest to that. One of her recent investigations offered some insights into ways this can take shape. She took a look at how podcasting’s big bad boy Joe Rogan was faring after signing a $100 million exclusive deal with Spotify. Carmen cleverly tracked indicators on social platforms and found that Rogan’s influence has actually decreased since joining the podcasting giant.

Until now podcasting has largely been the domain of independents and creatives using open platforms to distribute and market their work. But the big tech companies know there’s money there and they have arrived in force.

“At The Verge we don’t actually think that dynamic is good, which is sympatico with the Hot Pod audience and what Nick’s ethos was,” says Patel. “There is a vibrant, open eco system of creators that makes the internet and our culture what it is.”

Once again, it’s all about building trust with your audience – and not just attracting big names or making changes for a fast buck. “So much of what is good about podcasting is the democratic access to distribution. And, as distribution channels become more tightly controlled, we will see aggressive ways of pushing back.”

“For us, the story is the push and pull between what people like and what the platform companies want to do, and how they do it. And Ashley is very focussed on that story.”

Meanwhile, the company will take its first crack at a subscription product amidst a newsletter (and podcasting) boom. And with its latest acquisition, Vox Media continues to experiment and innovate – while focusing on supporting creators, quality journalism, audience engagement – and trust all-around.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Never-subscribers are hiding in plain sight. What are you doing about it?

How many publishers do you have a paid subscription with? While you may be a paid subscriber with one or two digital publishers, you remain a “never-subscriber” from the lens of the next publisher. The 2021 Reuters Digital News Report states that the majority of people pay for one subscription (for content from publishers and local papers), and that the median number of subscriptions for U.S. consumers is two. 

To digital publishers, never-subscribers mean lost revenue. But in today’s digital-first world, where ad revenues are unreliable and subscription fatigue is mounting, should never-subscribers remain a lost revenue opportunity? The answer lies in implementing dynamic paywalls.

A typical dynamic paywall journey looks like this: Place a first-party cookie so you can track user visits. Then, give the visitor access to a few pieces of metered content. After a set number of articles, it’s time to show a registration wall. Then, as soon as those views are up, it’s time to show the “all you can eat” subscription paywall/offer.

Many users traverse this journey but for those that don’t subscribe, publishers tend to “rinse and repeat” the same journey. Some publishers might try discount offers for “all you can eat” subscriptions or even suggest custom-bundles at lower price points before allocating dead end users to the “rinse and repeat” pool.

Untapped revenue opportunities

Despite visit recency and frequency metrics, there are users who defy registration, subscription, or custom-bundle offers even after relentless efforts by the publishers. These dead-end users are your never-subscribers. And there are hoards of them. There are also those users who churn after the subscription trial period is over, or sleepers who churn at the beginning of the month when they evaluate their credit card bills. All of these users offer an untapped revenue opportunity.

Putting never-subscribers (dead end users and churned users) back in the “rinse and repeat” bucket is hardly a strategy. However, there are a few questions that needs answers before a real strategy for never-subscribers can evolve:

  1. Who are the dead end users?
  2. What are the additional options available beyond discounting or custom-bundles?
  3. If users were given additional options, would fewer users subscribe?
  4. If users were given additional options, would there be fewer sleepers?
  5. If users were given additional options, would it accelerate subscription churn?

Dead end users could be visitors with high visit frequency who subscribed elsewhere. They might be casual visitors referred via social media. Or perhaps they are low frequency visitors from international geographies. The mix differs for each publisher, but retrospective analysis of user journey data should yield quick segmentation of never-subscribers.

Extending the user journey with discounted subscriptions or custom-bundles are good options for users approaching a dead end. But how do you know how much discounting would suffice? Or what custom-bundle offers will work for the user?

Unbundling solutions

To get this understanding, publishers have to unbundle the existing content pool to evaluate the true worth of each piece of content. Extending to unbundling solutions such pay per content provide insights for custom-bundles. They also provide substantial revenue streams for the long term.

Understanding the direct impact of unbundling solutions on the publisher’s existing subscription business requires sustained experiments and aligned goals between departments. For example, subscriber numbers dominate reader-revenue headlines. 

However, they fail to focus on subscriber retention or revenue. Marketing teams could be focusing on increasing pageviews without any consideration about the quality of the audience which converts into subscriptions. The editorial team on the other hand could be working in a silo without any revenue linked objectives.

Playing the long game to win

Improving audience engagement and customer-lifetime-value are high level goals that every department’s KPI should be linked to. For example, changing the KPI to net new subscribers and average revenue per subscriber are better health barometers of the reader-revenue business. New subscribers per-1,000 pageviews focuses the marketing team’s efforts on quality audiences. And, average time spent per page allows editorial teams to focus on quality content for their audience.

No publisher can escape the fact that subscriptions are a long game. The Google News Initiative reader revenue playbook carries an ominous message: 

“For some of the [news] organizations we’ve worked with, the transition can take years if not decades. But it’s achievable. For many news organizations, converting just 3-5% of readers into paying subscribers or contributors can support long-term sustainability”.

Therefore, understanding never-subscribers and the monetization opportunities that lie within is a long game too! But why is it that publishers are ever so quick to dismiss the never-subscriber cohort and bring them back into the “rinse and repeat” pool for subscriptions? It turns out that extending the user journey with unbundling options might bear more fruit.

About the author

Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from “Never-Subscribers.” He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.

Industry-Research

Subscription growth continues globally, but competition is fierce

Streaming services continue to rack up subscriber growth in the global marketplace. In fact, Juniper Research forecasts nearly 2 billion active subscriptions globally to on-demand video services by 2025. That’s an increase of 65% compared to the end of 2020. Domestically, USB analysts believe that Americans will add 50 million net new video subscriptions this year, up from a 47 million increase in 2020.

To gain insight into the market breakdown of global streaming marketplace, Finder.com conducted a survey with close to 30,000 consumers across 18 countries. In total, approximately 56% of consumers report having access to at least one streaming service. Finder.com is a content site focused on helping consumers make informed decisions in categories such as credit cards, mortgages, health insurance and others.   

Streamer concentration and service popularity

New Zealand and Brazil represent the highest concentration of respondents using at least one streaming service (65.3% and 64.6% respectively). On the opposite end, France and Pakistan report the least number of streamers in their countries, 45.2% and 44.6%, respectively.

Respondents were asked specifically about three global services: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. Netflix is by far the most popular streaming service among the three with more than two in five (40.1%) consumers subscribing to it around the world. Nearly 14% of those surveyed subscribe to Amazon (13.9%) and 13.1% subscribe to Disney+. Ireland had the highest number of respondents reporting that they subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime (56.9% and 19.9%, respectively). The U.S. ranked the highest in Disney+ subscribers at 32.8%.

Demographic appeal

Women tend to consume more on these platforms with an average of 57.2% reporting at least one streaming service compared to men at 55.6%. Countries with highest female usage are Ireland (69.2%), Brazil (65.9%) and New Zealand (65.3%). The U.S. ranks fifth with at least 63.9% of women reporting that they subscribe to at least one streaming service. In terms of popularity, Netflix is the most popular streaming service among women (45.2%) followed by Disney+ (14.7%), and Amazon Prime (13.8%).

U.S. streaming close up

The survey included Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and YouTube TV when asking U.S. respondents about streaming services. Again, Netflix leads with 45.4% of respondents saying they use it, followed by Amazon Prime (32.8%), Hulu (22.3%), Disney+ (18.1%) and YouTube TV (7.4%). 

Hands down, Netflix is the most popular platform in the U.S. across each age group. Sixty percent of people aged 18-24, 54.0% of 25-34-year-olds, 53.1% aged 35-44, 50.2% of 45-54-year-olds, 42.3% of 55-64-year-olds, and 38.2% of those over 65 all report that they use the streaming service.

Subscribing to video streaming services is the norm for today’s consumers. But competition is fierce. These services not only need to attract subscribers, they must also hold on to them. With an increasing number of subscription services, retention is critical to market growth and expansion. Importantly, subscription services need to employ strategies that build loyalty, provide added value, and offer personalization to compete in the global marketplace.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

3 Innovative ideas to fuel subscription success

For over 100 years, newspaper and magazine publishers made money in three basic ways: advertising, newsstand sales, and periodic payments from subscribers who awaited the latest news delivered  to their doorsteps. Most innovation in the publishing space revolved around the editorial content delivered to consumers rather than how people consumed that content. 

Then digital hit, and it changed everything. 

News and entertainment are widely available for free online. And the emergence of programmatic ad networks and news aggregators have put immense pressure on ad revenue. This means publishers need to shift toward a subscription-based revenue model if they want to survive—and thrive. 

Bringing in new subscribers and building durable relationships with them starts with revenue diversification. You need to segment the audience to focus on those subscribers that will drive higher LTV (lifetime value). And you must have a customer-first mindset. 

Your north star: delivering value in unique ways across the entire subscriber journey. The path to success: innovation. Here are three ways to deliver compelling digital experiences that’ll not only drive subscriber growth, but also encourage your subscribers to stick around for the long haul.

1. Diversify your revenue streams   

Publishers that offer more flexible subscription plans, innovative acquisition strategies, and hybrid offerings will win over those that only offer rigid pricing models or limited product offerings.

Offer newsletters and companion subscriptions

One way to remake subscriptions for the digital era is to provide new offerings that didn’t exist decades ago. Consider, for instance, Morning Brew, theSkimm, and the many successful Substack offerings. Well-written, targeted newsletters are an increasingly popular way to consume information. They are also a great way to drive additional revenue, be it through subscriptions or sponsorships. 

You might also consider developing a companion subscription product to your content offerings. GQ, for example, recently introduced its quarterly “Best Stuff Box.” It features electronics, grooming products, and accessories geared toward the same audience that reads GQ.

Drive interest through events

Events are another great way to drive interest in your subscription products (and to drive revenue on their own). You could hold a live event be it free or paid, virtual or in-person. This might be an in-depth interview with a celebrity or luminary. It could also be access to your on-staff experts, or gatherings of like minded audiences. Then you can use the resulting email list to nurture and help add new subscribers to your core offerings. 

2. Segment and personalize your offerings to drive LTV higher

While driving subscriber growth matters, you want to focus your efforts on those subscribers who will stay with you for the long term. Segmenting your audience into logical cohorts and targeting the most promising ones will help you both reduce your acquisition costs and ensure more sustainable growth.

Create and analyze subscriber cohorts

Start by looking at your existing subscriber base. Take a deep dive into the data to understand the characteristics of those subscribers with the highest LTV: Are they subscribed to a particular plan? Are they in a particular age range, income level, or geographic location? Perhaps they tend to take advantage of other offerings, like events or newsletters. Look at what’s working and optimize your subscription offerings appropriately for the cohorts you’ve identified.

Understand churn to boost retention

Looking at the “winners” won’t tell you the whole story. A big part of optimizing your efforts for the highest LTV is understanding who’s churning and why. Identify your “subscriber cliff, which is the point at which subscribers tend to churn. Then, work backwards to understand why they’re churning. Whether it’s due to a price increase, the expiration of a promotional introductory offer, or something else, you now have a starting point for your retention efforts.

Make increasing LTV everyone’s priority

Part of driving higher LTV is ensuring every member of your team is responsible for success across the entire customer lifecycle.  Reorient people’s roles around the whole customer journey. For instance, compensate your sales reps based on your subscribers’ product adoption and retention rates, instead of just the price of the deal close.

3. Embrace a customer-first culture, even if you have to rethink your product

To effectively digitally transform your business, you need to be willing to blow up your “sacred cows.” Ignore everything you thought you knew about your product offerings. It’s time to rethink every aspect of your offerings and reorient yourself around what your subscribers demand.

Rethink your product

First, your digital subscription need not be a one-to-one remake of your physical subscription. Say you’re a newspaper: instead of forcing subscribers to pay for access to the entire paper, maybe charge a smaller fee to allow them to access only certain sections, a set number of articles per month, or particular features (just the crossword, for example). Others may not care as much about access to your current journalism but crave access to your archives.

Offer bundles

Another way to orient your product offering around your subscribers is by partnering with a complementary brand (whether publishing or not) and offering a bundled subscription. The New York Times, for instance, partnered with Spotify a few years ago to offer a joint subscription to music lovers that was cheaper than the combined cost of both companies’ subscription plans.

Enact a cultural shift

To adopt a customer-first mindset, recognize it requires incorporating a new product culture and retraining your employees. For many publishers used to “doing things the way they were always done,” this will likely feel scary. But staying static in the way you monetize your offerings makes no sense, not when consumer expectations change so quickly or your competitors are able to move on a dime.

The pay off

The shift to digital has brought with it a tidal wave of change in consumer habits and expectations. The playbooks that served publishers so well for decades just aren’t that relevant anymore. By offering innovative bundles, unique subscription offerings, and creative merchandising models, publishers can build durable subscriber relationships and deliver value across the subscriber journey. 

The road to publishing subscription success is paved with a variety of revenue streams. It requires a focus on subscribers that’ll drive high LTV. And it requires a rethink — and possible overhaul — of your product and company culture. No one said it was easy. But it is sure to be worth it. 

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Create premium digital experiences consumers will pay for

Publishers have experimented with paid-for digital content since the 1990s. In the time since, they have gained valuable experience, which has given them a much clearer view of what does and does not drive engagement. These days, organizations of all types are laser focused on digital. For media companies, that increasingly takes the form of direct-to-consumer offerings such as subscriptions.

However, paywalls are no longer one size fits all. In fact, the models, gating, messaging and more have all become increasingly sophisticated. That said, everyone is trying to figure out the optimal model. Which new products and services should publishers explore? What are the barriers and challenges they face to effectively monetize their unique digital content offering?

Here are some key considerations that will help media companies figure out what will work best for their content and consumers.

Understand consumer consumption

Content should be optimized for each intended channel. Unfortunately, even now, print content is too often repurposed for digital—an entirely separate platform with different demographics. The same goes for video, social, and more.

Simple redistribution doesn’t constitute a digital strategy. Instead, a digital approach and mindset is needed to create content optimized for individual digital channels. One of the most important questions to ask, then, is: How do people consume content in a given digital channel?

The content or service is, of course, central to the success of a digital offering, but so too is the experience. Publishers need to make it their business to know when, where, and how customers consume online content and services. And they need to understand, and optimize, that specific experience. Without platform investment and the right levels of quality assurance and testing, consumers may find your digital product lacking. Needless to say, they won’t be likely to pay for it, and certainly to keep paying for it when their subscription is up for renewal.

Three hurdles hindering transformation

To figure out — and stay on top of — emerging challenges and opportunities, it is critical that media organizations transform their approach to focus on customer experience. Vindicia’s data shows the top three areas where many subscription approaches fail:

1. Insufficient digitization and payments support

For some publishers, adopting new digital models and diversifying into a range of additional paid-for digital products and services presents multiple challenges. High on the list is a lack of relevant skills and capabilities. In fact, App Annie discovered that app store spend via mobile and tablet has reached 20% year over year growth. This points to the necessity for in-app purchases and payments to be available and ready, enabling consumption. Your payment systems must be easy to use, flexible, and up to date.

2. Under-representation of customer-driven insights

Product managers and marketers are often in the dark about what audiences want. That will severely limit their ability to produce and promote successful new products and services. A lack of customer insights is the direct cause. This results in an under-representation of customer-driven offerings and features that a subscription showcases. Equip yourself to monitor and respond to customer usage and behavior quickly and effectively.

3. Lack of data expertise and scalability

Mather Economics recently found that 50% of digital newspaper subscriptions churn after four months. The primary reason? A lack of data analytics expertise and scalability. This same reason is the cause of why converting free readers into subscribers proves challenging in the absence of data analytics expertise, which urges publishers to undertake extensive A/B testing that hinders scalability. There are tried and true methods proven to generate more conversions in the publishing space. Whether the churn type is active or passive, publishing subscriptions need to pay close attention to churn indicators. For active, an indicator is low usage or usage that has tapered down. For passive, an indicator is chronic or semi-regular late or bounced payments. The ability to view and merge customer and churn insights allows publishing subscriptions to nurture each subscriber’s experience and retain them longer.

The critical role of a digital-first strategy

McKinsey recently reported that many companies are creating a new role: Chief Digital Officer.  This role is charged with ensuring that the organization has a digital-first strategy and integrates it into every facet of their business. Their analysis of how companies with a high [McKinsey] Digital Quotient (DQ) operate shows that “90% of top performers have fully integrated digital initiatives into their strategic-planning process.”

In fact, one publishing house in McKinsey’s study set a target of generating 50% of its revenue and profit from digital media within 10 years. With a full focus on digital, it accomplished that target in half the time. With the coordination between CDOs, content creators, and CEOs, there are specific ways to extract growth opportunities from transitioning to and effectively monetizing digital content.

The path is clear: Determine a digitization and content distribution strategy that fits the demographics your subscription is targeting. Leverage customer and churn insights to create offerings and features. And look to data to manage churn at the individual subscriber level. Digital is a fast-moving business with a whole lot of upside. With an organizational and leadership strategy that keeps digital innovation at the forefront, you will be positioned to keep pace and reap the rewards.

Featured Post | Revenue

MVP: Why sports coverage could be the next great subscription driver

Sports coverage and analysis is the lifeblood of specialist sites like Defector and The Athletic. However, as the competition for subscription revenue heats up, many media outlets are re-examining the value of sports as a means to connect with audiences. And a rash of hiring and acquisitions shows that is trickling down to regional titles too.

Last week The Athletic raised its subscription price. The increase – the first since the sports news and analysis title launched – followed two failed attempts to tie the brand up with larger publications. The first endeavor saw The Athletic pitch a partnership with Axios, which ultimately came to nothing. The second saw it enter talks with the New York Times, which is currently in the midst of its own drive to add millions more subscribers.

On paper the latter seemed like a great potential partnership. The Athletic boasted over one million subscribers as of September last year, and 1.2m as of May this year. That would amount to an instant addition of over one tenth of the users needed to take the NYT past its target of 10m subscribers by 2025.

It also would have cemented the NYT as one of the definitive sources of sports news online: in addition to its own coverage, it would gain that of The Athletic’s ~400 editorial staff across text and audio. In the face of hungry acquisition of sports content from the likes of Sinclair, it would have put the NYT ahead of the pack to scoop up sports-focused subscribers.

By the numbers

So, what went wrong? The answer lies in the often-omitted information from the story of The Athletic’s early success. Despite (or in part due to) its initial splurge on the best-known sports journalists in countries across the globe, the site is still not profitable.  

Even with reported revenues of around $80m in subscriptions, it is not covering the cost of its formidable staff. In an interview with Variety its founder Alex Mather stated: “We have got 450 reporters, writers, editors, producers on three continents producing as much volume as any national newspaper in the world per week”. He then noted that the company was still priced the same for consumers as when it launched with just three full-time employees.

It’s tempting to suggest that The Athletic raising its prices is an acknowledgement that its play for scale to appeal to larger publications has stalled. It is likely that some of those subscribers, brought in through discounted or free subscriptions, will choose to opt out of paying, so it is concentrating on consolidating revenue from its most valuable and engaged users.

Sporting chances

However, it is too soon to say that The Athletic as an experiment has failed. Rather, it could be the catalyst that sparks important changes elsewhere. Even in the announcement that accompanied the price hike, there was a note of optimism. As we come out of the pandemic and live sports return in earnest there is an opportunity for sports news and analysis platforms, both at legacy organizations and at the digital upstarts like The Athletic.

Jasper Wang is VP of revenue and operations at sports blog Defector. While it pales in comparison to The Athletic in scale, its smaller newsroom allows it to be profitable at a comparable membership cost to The Athletic. It is effectively right-sized by design. He told me:

“If we take the business model first, we are subscription-supported, because we knew there was a rabid group of readers. Is that millions? No. But is it tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands? Yes. And so the quickest way to get some cash flow was to ask people to pay subscriptions directly. We had 10,000, paid subscriptions within 24 hours of announcing the project. We’re at about 39,000 total paid subscribers right now.”

The rights stuff

So even if The Athletic’s play for scale will lead to it shedding subscribers and some staff again, there is a demonstrable hunger for that content. That’s led to a spending spree in both broadcast rights and editorial output.

In the U.S., for example, Sinclair is still high on its acquisitions horse, attempting to control the distribution and streaming rights to regional sport. Its latest $250m effort to acquire NBCUniversal’s seven regional sports networks (RSNs) bulks up its Bally Sport network. Sport, even at the regional level, attracts huge audiences.

In fact, at ESPN there is growing recognition that, even with smaller audiences, live sports offer a bevy of opportunities to connect advertisers with audiences. “Primetime is when most people are watching, and that’s what sports is. Sports is prime,” says Rita Ferro, president of Disney advertising sales. Perhaps that’s why ESPN Plus is also raising its prices, with the annual cost jumping from $60 to $70.

And it’s on that primacy that some news outlets are betting their fortunes.

Investment opportunity

Newspapers, which cannot afford or have no interest in becoming carriers for sports broadcasts, are approaching the opportunity from another angle. In the U.K,, for example, Reach plc is investing heavily in creating new roles to tap into engagement from fans through punditry and analysis. Much like The Athletic, it is splurging on bringing new journalists into the fold to boost its coverage.

Jon Birchall, Reach’s audience and content director for sport, said, “We want to bring more views, a wider range of expertise and more round the clock coverage on both our national and regional brands.

“Our ambition is to not only continue to serve our readers, viewers and listeners but also attract new fans and communities.

Connecting with communities

The phrase “new fans and communities” is telling. While national leagues still attract the lion’s share of coverage and therefore subscription revenue, The Athletic has demonstrated that audiences are just as invested in their local teams. Reach’s play, then, is to take back some ownership of the local sports coverage it lost while stripping out costs.

Its timing is significant, too. Reach is currently in the middle of a drive to explode its digital revenue. Lloyd Embley, its editor-in-chief, said: “Over the past 18 months, we’ve significantly ramped up the number of new sites we’ve launched as part of our Live network, many in areas where we don’t have established print titles.

“Thanks to our transformation of editorial operations last year and underpinned by our customer value strategy which ensures we build deeper relationships with our readers, we have created a sustainable model for digital-only local journalism.”

In the U.K., sports subscriptions are also key to the fortunes of titles like The Telegraph. While the cost is less than that of an overall subscription, it is a recognition that sports coverage has its own appeal. In discussing its subscription plans, the Telegraph ranks its sports coverage alongside its politics as among the biggest drivers of subscription take-up; a member of the Telegraph team flagged its upcoming suite of Olympics coverage to me as being one of its primary focuses for the year.

Mind the gender gap

Perhaps most importantly of all there is still a gap in women’s sport, both in terms of coverage and punditry. Research has found that on average women’s sport receives about 4% of the media coverage of men’s. This clearly suggests there is still significant headroom for growth in revenue from subscribers looking to learn more about women’s sports teams and stars.

That’s backed up by research from Deloitte, which demonstrates broadcasters are slowly cottoning on the rising demand for women’s sport. In 2019, CBS Sports Network signed a deal to televise 40 regular-season Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball games. Similar deals have taken place across the U.S. and U.K. for other sports.

Crucially, there is an opportunity for news orgs here too. Women’s sport advocacy group The Fan Project found that audiences are hungry for greater access to athletes and stars. At both national and regional level, investment in teams that can promote those stars will pay dividends for news titles. It’s a far cry from the days when tennis was considered the only women’s sport worthy of coverage in the U.K.

With the rise of online gambling and its integration with news titles, local sports coverage might well be the next great driver of revenue for regional titles on both sides of the Atlantic. Huge great experiments like The Athletic might not work on their own terms. However, they are already spurring a tranche of investment in what could be a key source of subscription sign-ups elsewhere.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

The best conversion strategy media and publishing companies still aren’t using

When talking about conversion strategies within the digital media industry, we often focus our efforts on the same tried-and-tested methods: email marketing, social media campaigns, SEO, PPC, etc. These are all important and effective ways to drive readers along the path to registration. They make up the foundation for a complete digital strategy, including subscriptions. 

But there’s one aspect of the online content offering that is too-often overlooked, despite being pivotal to a publisher’s bottom line: the on-site user experience.

By UX we don’t simply mean a seamless UI and attractive website design (although these are vital, too). We’re talking about data-driven, deeply personalized, unique experiences that make anonymous visitors far more likely to register, and repeat customers far less likely to churn. 

This improvement can take many forms, such as differentiated trigger points for your most engaged readers, messaging dependent on on-site behaviors, and personalized offers.  Any move to more closely align value with offering – in other words, every step taken into deeper personalization – makes your relationship with  customers stronger and more likely to last.

Ultimately, optimizing the user experience is a commercial gamechanger. It significantly affects two major KPIs : lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Optimize the user experience to drastically lower CAC

With more competition than ever and customer expectations at an all-time high, customer acquisition is tough. This is particularly true in the overcrowded market for digital content. 

However, experience optimization makes it much easier for publishers to target and convert their audiences. When it comes to messaging, 72% of consumers won’t respond to marketing efforts unless they are personalized, according to SmarterHQ. And while personalized messaging alone may not lead directly to a sale (although, it very much could), it may be just what your business needs to stop visitors falling at the first hurdle. If you can’t get your readers to engage, there’s no chance they are going to convert. 

But this is just the first step in a first-party data strategy. Progressively profiling readers by collecting new information at different stages of the subscriber lifecycle allows you to accurately target readers with registration walls at the right time, using user data such as on-site activity, device type and time of day. The incremental build up of your datasets gives your commercial decision makers a better understanding of the customer base. This, in turn, informs their ability to tweak messaging and experiences to nurture leads.

Further down the funnel, unique user experiences will also help get new customers over the line. The first-party data collected on registration can then inform tailored content, offers and timing. This accelerates conversation rates and keeps bounce rates low.

 It takes a lot of effort (time and money) to get users from awareness to intent. So, turning them off with an ill-timed paywall or irrelevant content offer leads to an automatic loss. On the other hand, Marketing Insider Group found that tailored content offerings increase purchasing intent for 78% of Americans. This makes triggers such as a datawall or paywall a make-or-break point for digital publishers.

Focus on personalization to increase LTV

Optimized experience increases your chances of converting a user. However, focusing on the customer experience straight after purchase also sets the foundation for higher value, longer-term subscribers. 

Maintain personalized content to keep engaged readers happy. This paves the way for an upsell opportunity for your most loyal advocates. It is famously 10x easier to sell to a current customer than a new one. However, this is often forgotten in the world of media. Increasing subscription value, or lengthening subscriber lifetime directly boosts revenue and profitability. Doing both has a double whammy effect on your commercial goals.

And personalization isn’t just for those at the top of the funnel. Use customer engagement and behaviors to identify churn risks — the subset of your customer base that seem disengaged and are therefore disproportionately likely to leave. Give them a tailored offer, potentially even a downsell to a lower plan, or nudge them with relevant content to maintain each and every relationship. 

Conversion is nothing without retention. Personalized experiences at the beginning of the customer journey (such as getting the right users to convert with relevant messaging) help keep churn at a minimum just as much as last-ditch attempts.

The bottom line

Experience optimization is the best conversion strategy publishers aren’t doing, But they should be. That’s because it has such a direct impact on commercial outcomes. Purchases are made on relevant, unique experiences just as much as bad impressions are via irrelevant or ill-timed messaging. 

And at the end of the day, optimizing the user experiences at each point of the subscriber lifecycle is an improvement that every publisher can make without needing to build a new team, or create a new marketing channel from scratch. Getting it right can turbocharge revenues. Getting it wrong can ruin all your other commercial efforts.

For most, it’s a simple yet powerful step that you just can’t afford not to take in today’s media landscape. 

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Lessons learned from the pandemic-era subscription boom

The Covid-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for massive subscription growth, in part because consumers sought quality journalism to get accurate information about the virus. It also accelerated content consumption trends that were already happening. Let’s explore the main highlights across digital engagement, retention and conversion during a year of increased appetite for news content. We’ll also unpack how publishers can use this data to prepare for future shifts in consumer demand. 

Paid trials convert to full price more often than free trials

According to our Subscription Performance Benchmark Report, approximately 17% of new monthly subscribers in January 2020 signed up using a free trial as the pandemic spread around the world. By December 2020, only 5% of new subscribers signed up on a free trial. This indicates that publishers became more confident with their pricing and smarter about promotional strategies as the pandemic raged on. 

Free trials can attract a lot of new users upfront. However, they make less financial sense when there’s high demand for content. At the same time, there’s much lower lifetime value gained from users who subscribe on a free trial offer. On average, you’ll lose over a third of free trial subscribers to churn before those users are required to make their first payment. It generally makes more fiscal sense to use paid trials in acquisition campaigns since you earn a little money upfront and retain a higher volume of users over the long term compared to free trials.

Onboarding post-pandemic subscribers is crucial for retention 

As many new users subscribed to online publications for the latest news about the pandemic, the strategic focus for media publishers had to shift from acquisition to customer engagement and retention. Convincing people to subscribe is only half the battle; encouraging them to continue subscribing is the other half.

If new subscribers don’t engage with your website early and often, they’re far more likely to cancel the subscription at the first given opportunity. There’s also the risk that they could become “sleepers,” which are subscribers who haven’t visited your site in the past 30 days. According to our benchmark research, an average of 40% of subscribers on media sites are sleepers.

To minimize the number of sleeping subscribers on your site, you need to act fast. Over half of your annual subscribers and nearly two-thirds of monthly subscribers will cancel in the first year if they become inactive. Your mission as a publisher is to incentivize those subscribers so they remain engaged. That’s why onboarding programs are so helpful to minimize churn and boost customer lifetime value. Use programs like guided tutorials and onsite benefits promotion to showcase all of the capabilities a new subscriber can access using their account. These programs not only drive user engagement, but they’ll also create habitual patterns that keep subscribers engaged on your site.

The Covid-19 retention bump endured thanks to annual subscriptions

Given the volume of new subscriptions early in the pandemic, many publishers expected lower retention rates and higher churn as the year went on. However, those fears never materialized. We found that users who became subscribers between March and July of 2020 retained at much higher rates than those who became subscribers prior to the declaration of the pandemic.

In an effort to maintain higher retention rates during the second wave of the pandemic, many media publishers made a concerted effort to increase annual subscription rates across their websites. Annual subscriptions retain much better than their monthly counterparts, and they subsequently carry much higher lifetime value for brands and publishers.

Throughout Q4 2020, many publishers used special promotions and smart pricing strategies to increase demand for annual subscriptions. Publishers used special events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to create short-term offers for annual subscriptions that, in many cases, more than tripled conversion volume.

Lessons learned

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to be a prominent and dynamic world event. Publishers should use this time to assess how user behavior impacted their subscription models in 2020 to make more strategic business decisions for 2021 and 2022. It is critical to:

  • Determine when and how people were most likely to subscribe
  • Analyze conversion rates, churn rates, special offers and trials to understand more about audience behaviors
  • Optimize websites with targeted messaging and personalized content that incentivizes greater onsite engagement
  • Maximize revenue opportunities with paid templates designed to boost conversions

By understanding these patterns, your business can make strategic decisions that will boost retention rates and, by extension, lifetime value. This will help you improve growth and develop a sustainable subscription business beyond this last year of high consumer demand.

Perspectives | Revenue

How HBR uses case studies and ebooks to sell premium subscriptions

When looking for ways to add value for premium subscribers, Harvard Business Review dug decades into the past. As Nini Diana, HBR’s director of consumer marketing put it, “Our archive is gold.” 

For 100 years, Harvard Business School has created case studies that bring real-world business dilemmas to life for students, entrepreneurs, and professionals around the world. These case studies dissect real-life situations in which managers have to make key decisions. Often, they must do so despite having incomplete information, conflicting priorities, or the pressure of ticking clocks. 

Harvard’s case studies often make their way into college lesson plans. Educators can access course packets to use in their teaching. “It’s an entire collection of solutions to almost any type of business problem,” Diana said. 

Turns out that Harvard’s 640 ebooks and thousands of case studies provide such a valuable selling point that one in five subscribers opts to pay 50% more to access them. “Despite being written eight or 10 years ago, they still have relevance,” Diana said. “A superuser of our content can benefit from any of them.” And HBR has found it wise to focus on the needs of the superuser. 

A valuable collection

Individually, most Harvard case studies sell for $8.95 per PDF and $15.05 for a printed copy. Ebooks are typically priced at$19.95 each. A five-ebook series on effective management — with titles including Getting The Right Work Done and Making Every Meeting Matter — sells for $90.

Certainly, some users are looking to solve a single issue, or for a very specific topic. However, HBR audiences generally face a wide range of business challenges and are interested in learning more. So, for just  $18 a month or $180 a year, 20% opt for HBR’s highest-priced subscription tier. It’s the only one  that includes access to a curated collection of case studies and ebooks. That price also includes HBR’s print magazine, full digital access, and full access to HBR.org’s archives.

Compare that to HBR’s entry level “digital” subscription, which offers access to HBR.org and its archive for $12 a month or $99 a year. For $12 a month or $120 a year, subscribers get full digital access to HBR.org along with six issues of the print magazine — but no case studies or ebooks. 

The premium tier offers a superior value for the type of audience that has the greatest affinity for HBR. In fact, Diana said the offer has been appealing enough to convince 20% of new subscribers to ante up for more. The offer has been particularly effective for driving subscriptions outside of North America, according to Diana. 

“As an institutional philosophy, we value print a great deal,” Diana said. Still, consumers who start with lower-priced digital-only subscriptions tend to skip the mid-tier offering when upgrading their plans demonstrating that it’s not print that’s the selling point. Rather, it is those case studies and ebook collections. 

Updates and value building

While premium subscribers don’t get access to every Harvard Business School case study and ebook, editors regularly update the selection that is available to reflect current corporate conversations. Recent topics of focus have included Blockchain, Black business leadership, and building workforces for the future. 

A new ebook is made available to premium subscribers each quarter. Premium users are able to access each title for a full year or until their subscription runs out. 

Subscribers currently can’t choose their own ebooks. However, that is a potential change user feedback has put on the team’s radar. “We’re always trying to rethink the product mix without upsetting the customer experience,” Diana said. 

HBR  learned how much its audience values ebooks and case studies through extensive user research, Diana said. Case study and ebook access were the two benefits users said would be most valuable to them — and most likely to convince them to pay more for an HBR subscription. 

They are “that thing Harvard can offer that no one else can,” Diana said. 

About the author

Meena Thiruvengadam is an independent journalist and editorial consultant. You can find her on Twitter @Meena_Thiru.

Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

Rebuilding audience engagement in the post-Trump era

Last Friday marked 100 days since Donald Trump officially left the White House as U.S. president. His departure ended a chapter crammed with chaos and controversy for hundreds of millions of Americans, and many more around the world. 

As the pandemic enters a second year, a deafening lack of Trump has been coupled with a general public malaise from too much news. As a result, the historic ratings bump enjoyed during the Trump administration quickly turned into a slump. Few outlets have been spared. 

The Washington Post reported that of the three largest cable news networks, only Fox News has held relatively steady. Its three prime-time opinion shows fell just 6% in viewership since the first weeks of the year. MSNBC and CNN, meanwhile, declined 26% and 45% in the 8-10 p.m. ET time slot, respectively.

But it’s not just cable networks that have been affected. The Washington Post itself saw a 26% fall in the number of unique visitors to its website from January to February. The New York Times experienced a 17% decline in the same period. 

A slump by any other name

While the “Trump Slump” is a legitimate reason for the downward trend, it’s not the only cause. Nor is it a universal experience. 

At The Atlantic, SVP of growth Sam Rosen says that, “We’ve found even in just the past five or six months, what has really changed is that the motivation to understand this historic moment has decreased and the desire for personal intellectual growth has increased.” 

As he points out, “It’s been an exhausting five years for many people and especially the past year. So, it kind of makes sense that the core desire to just understand what’s happening in the world still exists. But people want to invest in their own growth.” And the company is banking on that willingness to invest. 

After a decade of open access, The Atlantic relaunched its paywall 20 months ago. The 163-year-old organization now boasts more than 750,000 subscribers. It is well on its way to eclipsing one million paying members by the end of 2022. Rosen says that ensuring the outlet’s retention and acquisition efforts are equally strong is critical for achieving this goal. 

Fundamentals and experimentation

On the retention side, The Atlantic focuses on the fundamentals. For example they’re migrating as many subscribers to auto-renew as possible. Targeted email campaigns are also reawakening dormant subscribers.

Acquiring new subscribers has been more colorful. For example, experimenting with new slogans such as “Read. Think. Grow.,” which are a change from more newsier lines of messaging in the past. Rosen said The Atlantic thinks of its audience in terms of psychographics: people that are curious, interested in the world, willing to consider multiple perspectives, and open to new ideas.

“Looking at the vanguard of marketing technology is one of our biggest priorities right now,” Rosen said. “We’re evaluating a slew of technology partners that do customer journey orchestration, dynamic paywalls, personalization, and content recommendations. So that is where we’re doubling down.”

Not content with the content

Another newsroom building value not reliant on Trump’s hoopla is Axios, which was launched in January 2017. The well positioned itself strategically for a post-Trump world. Though the fall in traffic is unmistakable, Axios’ director of audience and growth, Neal Rothschild, believes this could actually be a good thing.

“I think if you were going to ask the founders of the company [Axios] whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, they would say it’s 100 percent a good thing,” Rothschild said. “Jim VandeHei, our CEO, has maintained that people needed to wean themselves off of politics during the Trump years. It was like fast food and it became very unhealthy. So, we’re starting to see the news landscape kind of clear out and make way for the topics that were core to the founding of Axios. Though it may not have seemed like it just because Trump sucked up so much oxygen.”

Those other topics include the rise of China, climate change, and the gaming industry. For the latter, Axios hired Stephen Totilo and Megan Farokhmanesh from Kotaku and The Verge, respectively, to write Axios Gaming. Their newsletter launched this week and will focus on the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Rothschild added that the company isn’t limiting its expansion to specific topics. Its strategy of hiring experts to build readership extends to local journalism in news deserts, where just a single outlet currently operates, or where no community newspaper exists at all.

Perspectives and connections

Centralized business units have been crucial for Axios. It’s technology, sales, audience, and marketing teams have allowed it to fill local voids without the vast capital needed to build startups from scratch, like The Texas Tribune in Austin and Seattle’s InvestigateWest. Axios currently has five local newsletters. It also recently announced plans for a sixth in Northwest Arkansas.

“To stand up a newsletter in each city, we try to hire two experts that can helm that newsletter so that we can speak to the city and have it growing quickly. I think that’s a departure from previous models for supporting local news. Usually, you need more of a physical presence in that city or at least need to invest more on the ground,” Rothschild said. “That’s not a huge site traffic audience strategy. But it is a pretty good growth and revenue strategy. And it is increasing our footprint around the country.”

Global ambitions

As important as local news has been to CBS, Trump was an international story. Significantly, the international audience it gained over the past four years remains. While many U.S. outlets have cut their international presence in recent years, CBSN — CBS’ 24/7 streaming news service — last year expanded to almost 100 countries. That global presence was critical in CBSN delivering 291 million streams in the first quarter of 2021, up 30% from the same period a year ago.

Christy Tanner, EVP and general manager of CBS News Digital said her team has only just scratched the surface of its global potential. Through Network 10 in Australia, which ViacomCBS owns, its partner the BBC and its own international bureaus, it’s creating even more international programming.

“With streaming audiences, we do not see what was at one point conventional wisdom in the news business: Allegedly, U.S. audiences are not interested in international news. That’s simply not true from our perspective.” In fact, Tanner said, “We think it’s an important differentiator. It’s important to tell the stories. We at CBS News digital have been extremely fortunate that CBS has continued to invest in international coverage.”

The local news

That said, Trump was as much a local story as he was a national and international one. So, CBS is also taking advantage of the dearth of local newsrooms. It now offers 14 total live streams including 10 in local markets such as the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and Minnesota.

One new feature Tanner is especially excited about are video push alerts. Launched last fall, the proactive alerts nudge CBSN viewers whenever news is breaking across the U.S. Instead of only watching that day’s White House news conference on the national live stream, viewers could easily toggle over to CBSN Minnesota to watch Minneapolis’ police chief providing an update to the George Floyd case.

Tanner says her team sends out alerts dozens of times a day. This means that viewers are engaged in numerous stories, as opposed to any one story such as Trump or Covid-19.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

The past four years certainly provided newsrooms across the country with a welcome surge in readership. However, the smartest strategists were planning for Trump’s inevitable departure well in advance. As a result, the fall in traffic hasn’t been enough to hurt their bottom lines too much.

For Tanner, who entered journalism as an editor at the AP in 1991, the Trump presidency was just another wild cycle. And she’s experienced many. Tanner says to work in digital media, one always has to be ready for what’s next, and make intelligent fact-based decisions.

“Things are constantly changing and those who don’t adapt fall by the wayside.”

Industry-Research

Courting media consumers with a customized approach

The pandemic triggered further consumer reliance on media for entertainment, information, and social connections. As consumers reenter life outside the home, publishers are assessing how they will maintain strong post-Covid consumer relationships. Deloitte’s new report, Digital Media Trends, 15th Edition delves into this issue. The analysis identifies consumer attitudes and behaviors and how to best serve their needs to form a strong relationship. The research is based on the survey results of 2,009 US consumers in February 2021.

Driving subscriptions

Consumers have multiple free and paid entertainment choices competing for their attention. Content and cost are key factors driving paid video subscriptions. Content, no cost, and ease of access are drivers for ad-supported video services. Consumers often assess subscription costs based upon their willingness to offset price by viewing advertising.

Nearly the same number of consumers prefer to pay for content as those that prefer ad-supported services. Interestingly, 40% of respondents prefer to pay $12 a month for a service with no ads versus 39% preferring a free service with 12 minutes of ads per hour. Understanding how ad-related preferences and expectations around personalization and privacy impact consumer choice is crucial to driving subscriptions, paid or not.  

Consumer frustration and churn

The flip side of acquiring subscribers is retaining them. Listening to consumer frustrations is an important action step for all businesses.

Deloitte’s identifies audience dissatisfaction when:

  • Content they want to view is no longer available on the service: 66%.
  • They must subscribe to multiple services to access the content they want: 53%.
  • They find it difficult to access content across so many services: 52%.
  • A service fails to provide them with good recommendations: 49%.

Anchoring consumers in a customized user experiences with an ease of navigation builds audience engagement and prevents churn. The report states the churn rate for streaming video services remained constant at approximately 37% measuring from October 2020 to February 2021.

Impact of data economy

Consumers are wary of data collection. They want more oversight in the data economy and question the value they get from its collection. In fact, eight in 10 respondents (82%) believe they should be able to view and delete the data that companies collect about them. Further, 78% said providers are responsible for protecting consumers’ personal data. Looking to put controls in place, 77% say the government must do more to regulate data collection and its usage. Importantly, publishers should assess ad-related preferences and consumer expectations around personalization and privacy to inform their internal policies.

As media companies navigate their subscription practices, they must continue to keep consumer preferences in focus. An emphasis on data and analytics is key to create a personalized entertainment service for consumers. Further, a customized user experiences makes it easier for subscribers to find content they want to view. Improving the interface with personalization and ease of use strengthens the audience connection. As the competition for audience grows tighter, it’s necessary to take actions that support developing and maintain a strong relationship with the audience. 

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Gannett’s Kelly Andresen talks revenue, regulations, and future growth

Publishers and advertisers need to be proactive about engaging with their potential customers where they are. And where they are, regardless of age or income group, is consuming content on mobile devices. Advertising is normally viewed as the currency used to view content. But if the ad experience isn’t positive for the consumer, they may choose not to buy in.

Whether it’s through differentiated ad units, frequency caps, or less intrusive delivery, the advertising experience needs to enhance the content, not lessen its impact by competing with it. The increase in time consumers now spend online can be seen as a boon. However, in the wake of last year, it means they’re bringing more expectations – and more uncertainties – about what they interact with. The savvy publisher can offer what others cannot: quality curated content, editorial standards, a less-cluttered ad environment and a greater degree of premium brand safety. 

I spoke with Kelly Andresen, president of sales development at Gannett, to hear about the challenges they faced in an unprecedented year. We talked about where they still found opportunities for growth and where they are placing their bets in 2021 and beyond.

Kelly Andresen, president of sales development at Gannett

What are the challenges you are currently facing as a digital publisher? How have those challenges changed during the course of the pandemic?


Kelly Andresen: For years, news and media companies like Gannett have been very focused on advertiser-led revenue. Of course that’s still very important to us. But one of the things we’re focused on right now is putting more emphasis on growing our subscription business.

We have some aggressive goals to reach by 2025. So now we’re figuring out how that looks on the B2C side, growing subscriptions to our news products and other content we publish. On our B2B side we’re looking at building subscriptions directly with our advertising and marketing partners. The challenge is building solutions that really meet everyone’s needs.

Consumption habits have changed significantly in the last year. How have readership trends changed across devices? How has this shifted your thinking for next year?

KA: Content consumption in general has moved to mobile. That’s not a new trend, but it was certainly accelerated by Covid-19. The total amount of screen time and the amount of time people spend interacting with content have both increased. That’s a great thing for a publisher. However, we need to remain conscious of the demand and need for truthful, trusted content.

In addition to the pandemic there was a lot of political and social unrest last year, and consumers thirsted for content they could rely on. As we all work to transition out of survival mode, we know that for us to thrive as a news organization we need a laser focus on what our customers and other partners need during this time. That’s been a driving force behind our thinking for the year to come: to grow subscriptions by helping the local communities we serve find trusted content.

The last 18 months have brought significant changes to privacy with Google sunsetting Cookies, Apple doing away with IDFA, and stricter laws like CPRA. Publishers are now faced with an identity conundrum. What are you doing to rebuild the identity structure?

KA: There’s an opportunity with these changes for publishers to take back ownership of that audience relationship without using an intermediary. By providing more transparency we can build our own zero-party and first-party data in a way that provides people the choice about how, when and where they share their information within our ecosystem.

I think the larger question as an industry is then, how do we put all the pieces together? Is there an opportunity to share data and if so, what does that look like? We want to not only provide amazing content but also ensure people feel they’re in a safe and trusted environment. The goal then becomes educating the public so they can make informed choices and we can build a better experience together.

When it comes to identity, should the industry as a whole spend time re-evaluating the value exchange between publishers and advertisers? How will this benefit —or hurt — publishers?


KA: This is an opportunity to take a less-than-optimal model and transform it into something where everybody benefits. Consumers opt in to share their information. Publishers share information with advertising partners. And advertising evolves from the early online days of pushing out a message and instead takes that data to create an experience that consumers value.

I think we can build something unique as long as we focus on maintaining that trusted environment and that transparency, and think about what’s effective beyond ad impression opportunities. There are a lot of unanswered questions. That means there’s a lot to explore and chances to innovate and test for the future.

What are you doing to re-imagine the way you nurture the coveted publishers-reader relationship when it comes to advertising experiences, devices and targeting?


KA: The focus has to be on the overall experience. Now that we’re asking our audience for their data, we have to deliver something that makes sense and makes it worth their while. There should always be a choice around data, but I think we have more work to do for that choice to work in our favor.

We’ve conditioned our audience to consume content in one area and see ads in another area when we need to look at how to be beneficial to the overall content experience. And that extends to technology and knowing that people are consuming in different places on different devices. How do we encourage people to seek out and spend more time with a specific outlet because it’s a good experience for them?

Let’s talk about brand safety. What does brand safety mean for publishers now? How has the conversation around safety and suitability changed during the pandemic?

The story is no longer about “click here and buy my product,” it’s about how a brand is helping individuals, communities, society as a whole, move forward. It’s also broadening beyond immediate health and safety concerns to create a top-of-mind support system, reminding consumers that when they’re ready, brands will be waiting to accommodate them. I suspect this approach will continue, but only as long as it’s still viewed as a partnership.

What advice would you give to publishers looking to withstand the lure of the walled gardens and compete with that model?


KA: I think this is something that all of us are thinking about and trying to innovate around. What can we do to continue to focus on that trusted experience and then how do we build scale together? I think there are opportunities for brands to work together again.

For example, we recently announced our partnership with McClatchy, one of the other very large U.S. newspaper publishers. Even though we’re in the same space, we’re coming together to build something that pushes our own standards and brings more value to publishers, advertisers, and audiences. We actively have national advertisers telling us they want to be more relevant. They want to speak to a local audience in a trusted space. I think the fact that they want to help shape that consumer experience with us is perhaps an early example of  things to come.

What new — or carryover — challenges and opportunities will 2021 bring for the digital publisher industry?

KA: First, there isn’t one leader in the privacy space. So, this is a great opportunity for trusted brands to come together and develop a new standard. Second, the new normal will probably not look like 2019 or 2020. In this next iteration, how do we remain relevant and provide an experience that people are truly seeking out in the 10, 12, 14+ hours they’re spending in front of screens or subscribing to audio streaming or other services?

Our current situation is pushing publishers to think about their audience in a much different way – not in a vacuum where it’s enough that they come to consume our content – more of a holistic view of how we can be even better and complementary to the other things our audience is consuming.

KA: As a publisher in the news category we know sometimes the news is not positive. In the past, brands often told us they didn’t want their messages to appear in the news category. But those kinds of blanket refusals are changing. I spoke earlier about changes in consumption, and how we’re all looking for trusted sources to help make sense of the world we’re in today. Brands and advertisers now recognize the audience demand for news and information content. We saw a large increase in advertisers aligning with social justice messaging in a way we didn’t see prior to the pandemic.

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