Most news companies have multiple products to sell — and most consumers are looking for friction-free ways to get more value from their subscriptions. During the INMA Media Subscriptions Summit 2025 in Amsterdam, panellists from Condé Nast, Der Spiegel, Newsquest Media Group, and The Pioneer shared how they are successfully combining these two desires.

Condé Nast’s strategy for bundling and unbundling

Michael Ribero, senior vice president of Global Consumer Revenue at Condé Nast, outlined the company’s strategy for bundling and unbundling content, commerce, and community. Ribero described bundling as both rewarding and complex, comparing it to assembling IKEA furniture: “frustrating but functional and financially rewarding.”

Condé Nast’s approach to bundling extends beyond traditional magazine subscriptions. Ribero highlighted the Bon Appétit box, which combines a subscription with monthly delivery of cooking ingredients, as an example of how physical products can enhance customer engagement. 

The company is also exploring synthetic bundles by partnering with complementary brands and services, such as mobile providers and delivery companies, to reach new audiences.

Complementary products like beauty boxes and membership-based business models are also part of the strategy. Ribero referenced the success of the Wall Street Wine Box and the emerging membership business targeting prosumers and businesses. The company has introduced a member store offering discounted beauty products to subscribers, modelled after Costco’s membership approach. Ribero noted this type of value-based offering strengthens customer loyalty.

Unbundling is another important part of Condé Nast’s strategy. Ribero explained that offering products individually or through flexible entry points helps broaden market access. Examples include day passes and starter subscriptions, which allow customers to engage with the brand at a lower price point. Post-purchase upsell strategies are also in place to convert these initial buyers into long-term subscribers.

Ribero emphasised that the key to successful bundling and unbundling lies in understanding customer behaviour and using data to present the right offer at the right time: “We want to meet consumers where they are and make it easy for them to engage with our brands,” he said.

Condé Nast’s focus on a wide portfolio of brands and tailored customer experiences positions the company for sustained growth in the competitive media landscape.

Der Spiegel engages young audiences, expands subscriptions

Isabella Wohlwend, head of subscriptions at Der Spiegel, discussed the company’s approach to growing its subscriber base and reaching new audiences. 

Germany’s largest news magazine has focused on offering targeted subscription models and experimenting with new content formats to engage younger readers and increase retention.

One of the key initiatives discussed was the Brave Step project, where Der Spiegel gave away 15,000 free DUO subscriptions to young readers under 30. The goal was to engage a younger audience not yet ready for long-term commitments. 

The campaign aimed to build familiarity with Der Spiegel’s content and create long-term loyalty, Wohlwend said. The campaign reached its target within 30 hours, and the company now has a data pool of 20,000 young readers to analyse reading habits and preferences. 

“It’s an investment in the future,” Wohlwend said, highlighting that understanding the behaviour of younger audiences is key to developing sustainable subscription models.

In addition to the Brave Step project, Der Spiegel launched a new Starter subscription to address content overload. The Starter model provides four articles per week with a countdown feature and access to archives, helping readers manage content consumption. A soft launch in November allowed the company to gather feedback and adjust the offering based on user engagement.

Wohlwend also discussed Der Spiegel’s efforts to diversify content, including the launch of a new gourmet magazine and bundled content from other publications like a football magazine. The aim is to create a broader portfolio that appeals to different audience segments while maintaining high journalistic standards.

By combining targeted subscription models, data-driven insights, and diversified content, Der Spiegel aims to strengthen reader engagement and secure long-term growth.

Newsquest caters to different needs

Newsquest, which owns 100+ local media titles in the United Kingdom, had a plan to reach 100,000 subscribers in five years. It managed to achieve that in just two. 

Head of Digital Reader Revenue Susanne Kinnaird explained how the news company achieved such striking results in so little time: “What I learned were three things: One, do what works. Two, don’t do what doesn’t work, and thirdly, change the things that are stopping you,” Kinnaird said. 

This way, Newsquest has doubled its active subscriptions.

The biggest problem team members faced regarding subscription news sites was that all the sites had the same offers. The price of £4.99 and the same packages were promoted to different consumers of distinct brands across the country. With 70+ subscription sites, this was not working. 

The team also used the same measurements for its paywall across all the sites, and a person could read 20 articles without reaching the paywall. “Some of our sites were putting out a very limited volume of articles, [and on those] you would probably never hit the subscription gates,” Kinnaird said.

A second problem stemmed from the newsroom. The company’s local news media had dwelled on its print-first state of mind, Kinnaird said: “There wasn’t a subscriptions mindset or any kind of strategy behind the content, apart from to generate pageview.” 

Kinnaird and her team established the strengths and weaknesses of their business. What worked for them was promotional sales; low-priced trial offers proved to give their acquisitions a boost. People who frequented the sites also had a common profile of being British and over 55. With that in mind, the team created a new strategy.

Newsquest began grouping its different media by their scale: big B2B bespoke sites, dailies, big weeklies, and tertiary local small weeklies. Based on these groupings, it could create more targeted plans for each. It also chose to offer frequent marketing promotions, which showed spikes in interest at the start and toward the end of the flash sales. 

Focusing on newsrooms became important in Newsquest’s new plan and it incentivised its newsrooms by editorial KPIs and hybrid bonus schemes. 

“If the newsrooms cared about their bonuses, then they needed to care about subscriptions,” Kinnaird said. 

The team further tracked conversions and fed this information back into editorial guidance. Paywalls became the decision of the newsrooms, who choose the paywall type based on one of the four content levels. 

The Pioneer and its boat

The Pioneer is a fascinating new German medium, originating in 2018 and growing to a project with 70,000 subscribers. 

Director of Growth and Product Moritz Klein shared Pioneer’s main idea: Don’t sell just a product; sell a lifestyle.

“If you ask a normal reader or normal consumer of news media about their product or what they do, they say, ‘I read X and I listen to Y.’ At The Pioneer, we strive for if you ask them about what they read, they’ll tell you, ‘I am a pioneer,’” Klein said. 

That is achieved with its subscription models and boats.

Pioneer One is a ship on the river Spree in Berlin and is the company’s headquarters. The newsroom and podcast studios are floating on the boat; Pioneer Two was built just for events.

“It’s a beacon of our journalism, and it’s mobile,” Klein said. “We can take the ship wherever there’s water. We did tours from Hamburg almost to Switzerland. Everywhere in Germany people were able to come, see, and experience us. We brought the journalism to them,” said Klein about the unique concept.

The Pioneer offers readers the option to choose their own monthly price for a whole year. This can be one euro or 50. Additionally, The Pioneer does not accept any advertisements. 

“We think that doing advertisements is challenging or even hurting the relationship that you should have with the reader,” Kein said. “Because they come to your Web site, you’re trying to sell journalism but at the same time trying to sell a TV.”

T0 generate revenue, it has five levels of supporters, from an observer who pays what they want to the evangelist, who is a lifetime pioneer. (There are only 200 lifetime pioneers.) The Pioneer launched this campaign twice (100 places each), where for the price of €5000, people get all the content forever for themselves and four of their family and friends.

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