During last week week’s INMA Media Innovation Week in Helsinki, attendees got a quick dive into four topics key to the news industry via seven-minute presentations. 

Here are eight case studies on the topic of sustainable revenue diversification presented at the conference:

VK uses predictive analysis to empower viral stories

Anton Gunnarsson Molin, head of sales and strategist/digital media at VK Media, shared how the Swedish company took its growth next-level.

In 2022, Molin was sitting at his desk when he heard someone running down the hallway. His fight-or-fight instinct almost kicked in because “people don’t run at work,” he told attendees.

“It was our editorial director. One of our reporters had published an article that gained a massive amount of traffic. It was a super viral article about the reporter’s addiction. And it got more than 75% more traffic than any other article that year.”

Yet, while Google traffic was high, conversions to subscriptions were low. 

From that, Molin created the article horn — a predictive data analytics tool that alerts the team when an article is going viral. The tool has two levels: one indicates if an article is about to go viral, the other if it’s already gone viral.

When that happens, the team makes a decision on whether it wants to open the article up from the paywall to gain ad revenue, keep the paywall locked to gain digital subscriptions, or do a hybrid of offering one article daily for free.

“If we can take this to get a younger audience, throw it to the social team, get Google and social traction, it’s money in the bank for us,” Molin said.

Since the creation of the article horn, ad revenue is up 45% and reader revenue is up 970%.

“This underscores performance of agile, data-driven decision-making in a contemporary digital media landscape.”

Russmedia’s Premium Story grows ad revenue

Russmedia in Austria has revolutionised its ad revenue by embracing the power of storytelling and human connection. Drawing inspiration from an INMA conference where Scandinavian media outlets shared their strategies, Russmedia decided to take a bold new approach.

“Readers don’t care if everything is perfect,” said Georg Burtscher, managing director at Russmedia. He explained that while many brands strive to present a flawless image — whether it’s the perfect CEO, headquarters, or product — Russmedia has shifted the narrative. 

Instead of showcasing an idealised product, they focus on how that product impacts real people: “Our audience isn’t interested in polished corporate images. They want genuine stories about people they can relate to and connect with.”

This led to the creation of Premium Story, a format that works much like customer reviews on platforms like Amazon, where personal recommendations lead to purchasing decisions. Premium Story tells emotional, relatable stories that inspire readers to invest in a product — not through technical details, but through human experiences.

Burtscher shared a specific example: A company wants to market a new hearing aid. Instead of highlighting its technical specs, Russmedia told the story of a woman who, thanks to the hearing aid, regained the ability to fully enjoy her life. This approach resonates more deeply with audiences because it’s about the real-world impact, not just the product.

Russmedia’s local reach allows the company to do what few others can: not just advertise to thousands of people but engage them in a story that sparks genuine interest. While some may question the effectiveness of this approach, Burtscher pointed out many have tried storytelling in advertising. But without the right execution, it often falls short.

With Premium Story, Russmedia has achieved remarkable success, reaching up to 22 times more people than traditional PR or display ads and increasing click-through rates (CTR) by 12 times. In just nine months, Premium Story grew from 0% to 12% of Russmedia’s total advertising revenue. 

“This model is built on what editors have been doing for over 100 years — telling stories about people. We’re using this knowledge not just to sell subscriptions, but also to deliver outstanding value to our advertising clients,” Burtscher explained.

By focusing on the people behind the product, rather than the product itself, Russmedia has found a winning formula, he said: “You can buy reach, but you can’t buy impact.”

Unlike ads on Google or similar platforms, Premium Story gets potential customers invested in the narrative. Readers aren’t just scrolling past. They’re staying to read, often for up to four minutes, engaging deeply with the content.

Premium Story goes beyond traditional metrics like CTRs and CPCs. It forges emotional connections and delivers measurable, lasting results. As Burtscher concluded: “Let’s work together to unlock this potential. Let’s tell the stories that truly matter and create sustainable success for our clients and markets.”

Amedia helps advertiser by offering product samples

Amedia, Norway’s largest local news publisher, successfully introduced its client to a whole new market through an innovative campaign.

Monika Sveen, strategic advisor, and Ina Kreutz Pauli, strategic key account manager, pointed out that 73% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product after trying a sample. With this insight, the idea for the campaign was born.

Amedia partnered with Finnish beauty brand Lumene to try a groundbreaking approach. Rather than relying on traditional ads, they thought of a strategy that benefited both their advertising clients and their readers.

The goal of the Lumene campaign was to raise brand awareness and introduce Lumene to a new market — Norwegian women — by encouraging them to test the product firsthand.

Staff wrote engaging articles about Lumene, sharing stories about the brand to create interest. The key innovation, however, was embedding an easy-to-order free sample option directly into the articles. 

Using data-driven targeting, Amedia reached Norwegian women with these stories. And if a reader didn’t order the sample immediately, they were retargeted with additional Lumene articles to remind them of the offer.

Staff also gathered feedback from those who received the samples, providing Lumene with valuable data and insights an added layer of value in their collaboration. The results exceeded expectations: Lumene’s sales increased by 101% in 2023 after including a media into their marketing strategy.

Sveen and Kreutz Pauli shared their key lessons with the audience: “Make sure you fully utilise your distribution power as a media company, and figure out how to monetise that power.” They also stressed the importance of testing and ensuring a strong brand match in collaborations such as this.

Ozone helps news companies maximise programmatic partners

Ozone, a publisher-owned data and technology company in the United Kingdom, has successfully restored control and influence to publishers. “It’s been a rough few years for publishers, but I want to make it clear: We have a great opportunity to look toward the future,” Dipti Patel, publisher development director at Ozone, said.

Ozone works with news publishers in two main ways: through Ozone Smart Bidstream, which allows individual publishers to collaborate as a collective for greater opportunities, and through Ozone Technology, which equips publishers with a suite of products to take greater control over their programmatic businesses.

Ozone Smart Bidstream is technology designed to maximise revenue from programmatic partners and retain value in the programmatic ecosystem in three key ways: 

• Reaching more potential buyers by making ad spaces that were hard to target before easier to sell.

• Improving how ads are presented so they look more appealing to advertisers.

• Giving publishers more control by filtering out requests that don’t add value.

This strategy offers three core benefits:

1. Buyers see more of the inventory they value and less of what they don’t, making them more likely to buy and reducing processing costs for publishers.
2. Buyers who are less likely to purchase aren’t shown the opportunity at all. “You can’t hang out on our bidstream and cache our data. No more free audience,” Patel emphasised. This technology fundamentally shifts how buyers value publisher inventory, leading to more frequent and higher-value bidding.
3. Ozone is helping to shift the power of distribution from the buy side back into the hands of publishers.

The success of Smart Bidstream is clear: Publishers saw their baselines increase by 8% to 21%. Additionally, Ozone has implemented an independently verified measurement framework, allowing publishers to track the uplift from Ozone’s technology using their own Google Ad Manager (GAM) data — measuring programmatic revenue with and without Ozone.

Ozone’s approach has empowered publishers by increasing opportunities, driving more buyers to purchase, and ultimately bringing more revenue back to the publisher.

VG’s Black Friday strategy pays off

Maren Qvale serves as the head of SEO and affiliate at VG, a leading Norwegian news company. 

Qvale explained the relationship between VG and Black Friday: Black Friday holds significant importance for VG, as the revenue generated during Black Week helps fund 10 journalists for the entire year. 

To capitalise on this opportunity, they developed a product called the Black Friday Studio.

The Black Friday Studio features the best offers, meticulously curated by VG’s specialists. 

“We want to give a good user experience for our customers, and we ensure that our links are always up to date. We want to be able to procure the best offers that are available,” Qvale explained.

Key results from the campaign were:

• 2.3 million clicks to retailers.
• US$8 million in revenue for retailers.
• US$1 million in total revenue for VG (commissions and ad sales).
• Increased revenue over 19% over 2022.

Irish Independent future-proofs its brand

Lee Martin, head of marketing and promotions at the Irish Independent, talked attendees through how they started to future-proof their news brand. 

To create a sustainable digital revenue growth, the company had three big barriers to tackle: 

1. They had too many single-format brands (for example, numerous regional prints, local news, supplements etc.).

2. Consumers weren’t recognising them.

3. The willingness to pay for quality journalism is waning, presenting a challenge for sustainability. 

The solution for these problems would be to transform from a collection of separate newspapers, Web sites, and apps into a unified, multi-platform news brand.  

The solution would call for:

1. A revised brand architecture. 

2. Stakeholder support and alignment.

3. A new visual language to unite existing properties and audiences while attracting a new younger demographic to our digital offering.

The new inclusive, Irish and distinctive Independent master brand was introduced to audiences in September 2023. Early results indicate an increase in the percentage of regular digital users who believe it is worth paying for premium digital news content. 

NTM revamps teams, tools, increases digital growth

With a new product department, a new ad tech department, and small- to medium-sized business sales teams and local sales teams, NTM began to change how ad tech worked at the Swedish company.

“Our strategy going forward should be digital ads first,” said Annie Lidesjö, the company’s COO. “Before we had been selling Google, Facebook, social, e-commerce, but now we started to focus on digital ads combined with the print business instead. We also needed to build self-confidence into sales people that the brand is strong and that advertisers needed it.” 

The results took two years to accomplish: Even with a downturn in the economy, NTM saw nice growth in digital ad sales with local display ads up 24%, native ads up 5%, and total digital growth up 9%.

For 2024, the team began to focus more in native business, revamped its SMB sales team, started working with more self-service ads, and added marketing automation.

It’s growth continued: As of August 2024, local display ads are up 30%, native ads are up 89%, and total digital growth is up 20%.

“We put a lot of investment into having the right system in place,” Lidesjö said. “We invested a lot in the right education for all the people within this organisation and also put a lot of effort into putting the right people in the right positions. We started out with 220 people spread out all over Sweden who didn’t talk to each other. Now we have 120 and they call each other every day. They are all committed to getting good results going forward.” 

Expressen partnership improves customer experience

In Sweden, 65% of marketing revenue goes to tech giants annually, according to Paul Brandenfeldt, head of sales at Bonnier News.

“That’s a big problem for all of us,” he said. “We are filling them with our content every day just to reach a young target group. We’re filling them with content that they can’t produce themselves. We are falling into our problem, filling them with content we could make some revenue with ourselves.”

Brandenfeldt argued against inventing something new, using the example of the automobile (a 200-year-old product, like a traditional newspaper) and the Tesla (a newish company getting the benefit of being an electric vehicle).

“So why invent a new wheel when vertical video is part of our daily user in social media?” Brandenfeldt asked.

“You need timing, innovation … but vertical video isn’t new here. The new part is that it’s in the trustworthy media.”

Brandenfeldt stressed the need for a tech partner “that can support you, make you look good, make you innovate new things.”

Bonnier’s partnership with Zendesk, a customer support software company, that makes ads and content to faster: “Now we are on the same level of social media, Facebook, Snapchat, Expressen story. That’s kind of cool.”

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