Overview of this campaign

VG Labs mandate is to find, nail and scale digital products outside of VGs core business to fund independent journalism. In 2023, we were tasked with finding the "next big thing" within affiliate marketing - VGs fastest growing business area. When researching the market in Norway, we discovered that; 1) purchasing gifts online in Norway is a huge market, both for christmas, weddings and birthdays. 2) faulty purchases of gifts is a major problem. Gifts getting returned, never used or thrown away accounts for over 400 million USD each year, only in Norway. 3) There were (at the time) no wishlist apps where users could add and reserve wishes from any store for any occasion. There was an untapped market where we could solve a real issue, and generate revenue outside of VGs core business. 

A small team in VG Lab consisting of a developer, business developer and UX designer got to work.

 

 

Results for this campaign

In 2023, VG Lab launched the minimum viable product (MVP) of Ønsk (the root of the word "Wish" in Norwegian). The core features consisted of; adding wishes from anywhere through a search function, by URL or free text. Gift givers could reserve wishes, so others didn't get the same thing, all while keeping the surprise for the recipient. Inspiration on what to wish was enabled through curated lists, product feeds and content creators / influencers. 

Pretty soon, we learned that 75% of users added wishes by pasting URLs, and the average user added 17 wishes. Every URL has the potential to be monetized. In a hackathon early 2024, our developer created a technology from scratch, which automatically monetized every URL where we had an affiliate partnership (more about this in the media deck). Commercial partners saw the value of inspiration being close to purchase, and pretty soon we had more than 600 commercial partners on Ønsk. With the business model in place we started building the app, learning from the MVP and loads of user interviews. In September 2024 we launched Ønsk in App Store and Play Store. 

Three weeks after launch, Ønsk was the most downloaded app in App Store (for a few days). 

The first year live, Ønsk contributed to VG with;

- 60 000 app installs and 80 000 registered users. 

- 800 000 wishes

- 2.5 million clicks to webshops

- 3.3 million USD in order value tracked

- 340 000 USD in commission

Every penny Ønsk makes, goes back to funding VGs journalism. Making a wishlist app has contributed with reaching an audience VG struggles to meet - young women - and generate revenue outside of VGs core business. 

 

Contact

To contact a company representative about this campaign, click here for the INMA Member Directory