INMA Researcher-in-Residence Greg Piechota is spending a lot of time focused on smart pricing these days. Where his mind and research go is a good indicator of where the industry should be paying attention.

“A lot of publishers built volume of subscribers in the COVID year because of the COVID bump,” he said. “But now actually is the time to make it a real business. Some suffered from loss of ad revenue or shutdown of in-person events. Digital subscriptions really need to make money now, so publishers are much smarter about pricing.” 

Click here to view INMA Knows: Smart Pricing

While the well of knowledge on this topic isn’t as deep as some INMA Knows topics, it is growing quickly. INMA has curated research, much of it from Piechota, and case studies to illustrate the importance and success of smart pricing, including the case study of Politiken, which increased its price 400% — and had its best year ever in 2020.

Pricing is the fastest and most effective way for media businesses to increase profits, Piechota said: “In the COVID year, pricing policy proved to be one of the most debated issues in the news industry, starting with decisions on whether to lift paywalls early in the pandemic, moving to different approaches to free and paid trials, and ending with the urgency to raise ARPU to make up for the lost ad revenue.”

INMA Knows is a content surfacing project designed to personally curate all association resources on a single subject of high interest to INMA members. Here are a list of all the live topics:

• AI and the Newsroom
• Australia and Big Tech
• Connecting with Community
• COVID-19 response
• Digital Platforms
• Mobile
• Newsletters
• Personalisation
• Podcasts and Audio
• Print Engagement
• Smart Pricing
• Subscriber Retention
• Third-party cookies and advertising
• Trust In Media
• Video

We aim to curate a new subject monthly, and these subjects are updated regularly. This is a free service for INMA members. If you have a subject matter recommendation, let me know.

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