Following two days of study tour stops around Amsterdam, the eighth-annual INMA Media Subscriptions Summit officially began on Wednesday with a record number of 351 attendees from 170 companies and 28 countries gathering in Amsterdam to take a deep dive on the topic of media subscriptions.

Gert Ysebaert, INMA president and CEO of Mediahuis, welcomed attendees, reminding them that subscriptions are the industry's most sustainable revenue: “There is no stronger asset than being paid by our readers. As long as keep the trust of our readers, we will keep a strong future.”

Subscription shifts to profitable growth in 2025

Event organiser Greg Piechota, INMA researcher-in-residence and lead of the Readers First Initiative, discussed INMA benchmarking data and what it foreshadows for the year.

His research shows subscriber-oriented news media saw on average a steady growth of 11% last year. Piechota discussed four ways news companies are sustaining subscribers, including smart paywalls and bundling.

More details from Piechota on the topic can be found here.

Navigating AI at news companies

Aleksandra Przegalinska, an AI futurist and professor at Kozminski University and Harvard University, told summit attendees GenAI has huge potential to augment productivity by increasing time efficiency and the quality of work — provided the technologies are tailored to the specific needs of each business. 

Przegalinska listed six categories emerging with GenAI:

1. Large Language Models (LLMs).
2. Video.
3. Sound.
4. Diffusion.
5. Agentic.
6. Physical AI. 

Read more here. 

Balancing scale and loyalty

Koen Meeusen, sales and care director at Mediahuis Belgium, recommended news companies focus on keeping subscribers more than getting new ones: “Focusing in acquisition on the good ones helps us to maximise retention and build sustainable relationships.”

Johanna Suhonen, vice president of Alma Media, explained how the company now has corporate partnerships with trade unions and banks to offer corporate subcriptions.

Sanjay Sindhwani, CEO of The Indian Express, reported the publisher reaches 140 million readers monthly (a statistic that had summit moderators clarifying to make sure it was not a mistake). 

The company’s strategy is structured around three key stages of the customer lifecycle: renewal, retention, rescucitation.

The rest of their stories are here.

Intelligent paywalls

Iñigo de Juan Sainz-Planillo, group chief subscriptions officer at Unidad Editorial; Puneet Kukreja, vice president/product and reader revenue at Times Internet; and Darya Ushakova, chief marketing officer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, shared lessons learned from their smart paywalls, created to boost reader engagement and revenue.

De Juan Sainz-Planillo discussed balancing ad and reader revenue with El Mundo’s dynamic paywall, Kukreja shared details of Times Internet’s hybrid paywall, and Ushakova explained The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “$1 for six months” offer.

More details can be read here.

Newsrooms’ role in a subscriber-first business

Top editors from Vocento, Gazeta Wyborcza, and De Telegraaf discussed how their newsrooms are part of the subscription-first news business.

Kamran Ullah, executive editor at De Telegraaf, advised: “Don’t write articles, tell stories. That’s what we need in this business.”

Fernando Belzunce Gutirrez, director of general editorial at Vocento, said news companies should tout their journalism more in their efforts to gain subscribers: “We are very modest and sometimes we need to shout more.” 

The Pilgrim Executive

Author and former CEO of 24sata in Croatia Boris Trupčević came on stage in the hiking boots and backpack he wore while he walked the Camino de Santiago for 33 days.

Advice from his book The Pilgrim Executive for stressed and disconnected media executives?

The summit continues through Friday.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .