The INMA Media Subscriptions Summit, which started on Monday with a study tour and ends tomorrow with five topic-specific seminars, continued on Thursday, covering topics ranging from e-commerce and premium content to bundling and reader segments.

A record number of 351 attendees from 170 companies and 28 countries gathered in Amsterdam for the week — the eighth-annual Media Subscriptions Summit —  to take a deep dive on the topic of media subscriptions.

Here’s what Thursday’s sessions covered:

Lessons from e-commerce

Kunle Campbell, author of E-Commerce Growth Strategy, shared seven key principles for selling subscriptions and products in the current media landscape, including building an off-line community, clarifying the ideal customer profile, and optimising for subscriptions.

“Over the past 10 years, what we’ve noticed is that you build an audience into a community, and then they become consumers,” he told the audience. “We need to bring people together.”

Read the rest of his principles here.

Personalising content, experience

The Aftenposten team — Johanne Barman-Jenssen, brand manager; Karl Oskar Teien, director product/UX; and Eirik Hammersmark Winsnes, commercial director — shared practical insights from Norway’s leading news brand.

Aftenposten has 175,000 digital subscribers and around 250,000 subscribers across all platforms. Its 2024 goals inlcuded reaching 200,000 subscribers, strenghtening its position across Norway, and reaching younger audiences.

“It could be tempting to only hunt for the consumers with the biggest willingness to pay in the short run, but we do believe that it’s really important for us to balance short-term growth with a healthy position,” Hammersmark Winsnes said.

Read the full story here.

WSJ+ bundles differently

Todd Olsted, vice president/bundle subscription strategy at Dow Jones, explained how the company decided on a depth bundling strategy instead of one focused on breadth.

The four brands at play are The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, and Investor’s Business Daily. The strategy is to offer the company’s super users an MPV experience.

“WSJ+ is not just about a discount,” Olsted said. “This is truly about something more — from a transaction offer to a premium experience.”

Premium content for the win

Dominic Grzbielok, head of paid content at Süddeutsche Zeitung; Tim de Gier, head of content at Podimo; and Michael MacLeod, founder of The Edinburgh Minute.

MacLeod took the audience behind the scenes of his grassroots, independent newsletters (one based in Edinburgh and one in London): He gets up at 5 a.m. each morning and sends the newsletter to 20,000 people at 7 a.m. Why? He’s a morning person.

A friend of his suggested he charge people for it. Last year he made $147,596.

Reuters’ shift to the subscription market

Summit co-moderator Rober Whitehead hosted a “fireside chat” on the stage with Phil Andraos, generative manager/digital at Reuters — complete with a virtual fire, bookshelves, cozy rug, and “wine” poured by a “butler.” 

They discussed Reuters’ transition to a direct-to-consumer model and the strategy driving this change.

“We’ve seen that relying solely on advertising is no longer enough,” Andraos said. “Diversifying revenue streams through subscriptions and partnerships has become essential.”

Read the full story here.

Bundling and unbundling

The summit audience heard from four media executives on the topic of bundling: Michael Ribero, global chief marketing officer, Condé Nast; Isabella Wohlwend, head of subscriptions at Der Spiegel; Susanne Kinnaird, head of marketing/reader service at Newquest Media Group; Moritz Klein, director/growth and product at The Pioneer.

Forget the subscription ceiling

Ivar Krustok, chief AI and innovation officer at Delfi Meedia, advised news companies not to scale down their content.

“If you go on Netflix, there are probably 20 new shows that have just come out. The consumers — even if they’re not watching them — get a lot of content. Now a lot of new publishers are scaling down [the content] because they’re seeing that’s not value.

“But should we do less? I think, no, we should scale it up actually.”s biggest YouTube channel). 

Rethinking the future of news audiences

Greg Piechota, lead of the INMA Readers First initiative and organiser of the summit, told the story of Mr. Jones (an investigative reporter who covered the Ukrainian Famine in the 1930s) and Mr. Beast (host to the world’s biggest YouTube channel). 

The two stories illustrate the changing media industry — currently in competition with independent content creators.

He shared several case studies, illustrating now news companies like The Washington Post and Financial Times are using social networks to try to compete.

The summit concludes on Friday with five topic-specific seminars on data-driven content, AI and the next-gen paywall strategy, maximising total revenue, user needs and AI in newsrooms, and growing loyal readers. 

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