On Tuesday, day two of the INMA Media Subscriptons Summit study tour in Amsterdam, 27 attendees continued their tour of local media with three stops, discussing B2B and B2C customers, plus the near future of AI.

Led by INMA Newsroom Transformation Initiative Lead Amalie Nash, the study tour, which started on Monday, visited FD Mediagroep, Media.Monks, and Mediahuis/De Telegraaf before joining the opening reception of the summit at the Heineken Experience.

Here are a few discussions from the stops:

FD Mediagroep grows B2B business

Financieele Dagblad (FD) is known as the “little brother or sister of FT,” Deputy Editor-in-Chief Annewil Neervens told the study tour group. 

One of the oldest news companies in The Netherlands, FD focuses on financial and business daily news. The company has been digital-first since 2014 and publishers its printed edition six days a week. Neervens shared what she thinks are the three pillars fundamental to the company’s success:

1. Understand your audience (with data and in other ways).

2. Utilise data (FD teams are data informed, not data driven).

3. Create “mini-editions” (their newsletters and push notifications are key). 

Seventy percent of FD’s digital subscribers are B2B, as its 65% of its revenue. 

“A significant part of our growth comes from that segment,” she said.

Media.monks reorganises company through AI lens

The group had wide eyes and full heads after their 90 minutes with Wesley ter Haar, co-founder and chief AI officer at Media.Monks. 

He took the media executives back to 2023 when ChatGPT debuted on a broad scale: “Before that moment, it was a toy. That’s the moment it became a tool.”

McKinsey looked at 2,250 jobs categories that make up the labour around the world, trying to identify what part of that will be replaced in the next five years. Depending on the job, the answer is 30% to 100%.

“The key question,” he said, “ is how do we look at big changes we need to make and is this happening right now.”

The answer to the second question, he said: Yes.

To the first, change is “very uncomfortable but extremely possible,” he said.

Mediahuis/De Telegraaf rethinks retention of former subscribers

Something to consider: Readers who unsubscribe are called “ex-subscribers.” 

That doesn’t feel very welcoming, according to Riske Betten, B2C product director at Mediahuis.

“That means they’re not a member of the family anymore,” she said. “Instead, they will always have an account. It’s just not active. It’s a mindset and we should think of it as pausing your subscription.”

Returning to subscriber status should be easy, she said:

“If an old subscriber has to fill out all the forms they filled out the first time they subscribed, that’s silly because we already know so much about you. We should be really helpful and have all your preferences saved. It should feel very welcoming to start back the subscription.”

The summit continues through the week.

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