Bonnier B2B shares its transformation from print reliance to digital revenue
Newsroom Transformation Initiative Blog | 05 April 2023
As newsrooms become increasingly more digital and dependent on reader revenue, news media companies are looking for ways to reduce print runs and grow their digital opportunities.
Around the world, companies are experiencing what INMA Newsroom Initiative Lead Peter Bale calls “the big shift.” That shift, he said, is the consolidation of the work that has been done in recent years to migrate to a digital mindset.
During this week’s Webinar, INMA members heard more about the digital journey from Jure Gostisa, head of data and analytics for Bonnier B2B, and Meelis Mandel, editor-in-chief at Äripäev. Lessons on going digital-first with Bonnier looked at how the Swedish-based company began looking at digital more than a decade ago, some of the steps it has taken, and what results it has had.

Gostisa shared some lessons learned as Bonnier B2B addressed print reduction: “More than 10 years ago we realised that there is no future in being a printed newspaper, so we needed to do something.”
Bonnier B2B published print business news dailies similar to the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. It started its print reduction journey in Lithuania in 2014 when it stopped printing Verslo žinios on Mondays. Then, in Slovenia in 2019, it stopped printing the Friday Finance newspaper. The 2020 lockdown hastened the print reduction for Äripäev, Estonia’s largest business news outlet, which saw its daily newspaper become a digital daily with one weekly print publication. Verslo žinios also moved to that publishing schedule.
At the beginning of 2023, Äripäev further cut its print schedule, “reducing it basically to digital-only and they publish a monthly magazine,” Gostisa said. At the end of this year or in early 2024, Slovenia’s Finance will also move to a digital-plus-weekly model as well.
The changes have been part of a strategic push across the group designed to boost profitability, he explained: “We decided that our traditional revenues— which were basically print advertising, print subscriptions, and television ads at the time — needed to be shifted to new revenues, which are basically digital revenues but also [include] some events and similar projects.”
One important decision the group made early on was to attribute print subscribers to digital revenue if they visited the digital site once a week. That decision was important, Gostisa said, “because it encouraged teams to really double down on getting digitally engaged.”
Gostisa emphasised that the push to digital has been a long time coming, thanks to falling print revenues. “At that time, The New York Times CEO [Mark Thompson] said that the traditional revenue streams like digital advertising and diversification with membership and e-commerce and events will be great, but not enough. We will actually have to get paid from exactly what we are producing. And that was when the decision was made within the organisation that reader revenues are going to be the main revenue stream.”
The road to reader revenue
That didn’t mean other revenue streams were no longer important, Gostisa said, but Bonnier understood it needed more. Bonnier B2B joined a programme Financial Times had created to help transition to digital. Then, it began getting the entire organisation on board to become more resilient. That included deciding that content revenues should exceed content production costs.
“A different way to say that is the newsroom should be profitable by itself without advertising, without advances, without anything else — just by selling their own product,the newsroom should be profitable.”
As it moved to digital and embraced reader revenue, it eliminated many sales and marketing costs, print and distribution costs, and some editorial costs. The company hypothesised that such a model would “lead to a really independent newsroom with a quite bright future.”
That hypothesis has proven true, with some of the publications in Bonnier B2B’s portfolio already achieving that profitability and others well on their way to it. Gostisa said publishers who still hold some “nostalgia for print” should recognise that such nostalgia comes at a price.
“That can sometimes even be counted in a headcount in the newsroom,” he said. “So often it gets to the balancing between are we going to print the newspaper as a product or are we going to have a stronger newsroom?”
Each publication in Bonnier B2B can choose when the time is right to make those changes, and it only occurs after much preparation.

How Äripäev moved to digital
Mandel shared the journey Äripäev took as it prepared to become digital-only, explaining that it used telemarketers to reach out to subscribers with low digital engagement and ask them to read the publication online. This moved about one-third of the readers to digital.
More imperative to the mission was creating a North Star. Madnel said the company’s North Star is to become the world’s most-subscribed economic news media per capita. Achieving that would mean increasing the number of paid subscribers to 23,000 or more; four years ago that number was between 13,000 and 14,000, but today it has reached 18,000 paid digital subscribers.
“The goal is challenging but doable,” he said, adding it was also necessary to implement difficult goals “… because we saw the danger that in a few months or weeks no one will bother to deal with the North Star.”
To augment efforts, the compamy hired a trainer who implemented Sean Covey’s principles from the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution. This led to creating KPIs and specific goals and, while Mandel said he had concerns about the journalists getting on board, they surprised him: “Even investigative journalists, the old ones, said, ‘OK, let’s follow our KPIs and let’s follow our North Star.”
For example, he shared, the opinion desk’s main KPI is set around the number of leaders with personal accounts who are digital subscribers and how many of them visit the site each week. The theory behind that KPI, Mandel said, is that each subscribed opinion leader will bring other subscribers on board over time. Meanwhile, the stock desk monitors the number of subscribers in the small investor segment.
Two reporters left because they weren’t interested in changing their approach, but nearly 40 stayed and jumped on board with the plan. Mandel said they now understand that the only way their salaries will rise is if subscriptions rise, too — and everyone is now working toward the same goals.

In January, Bonnier launched a print magazine that allows Äripäev to keep revenue from advertisers that prefer print and give print-preferring subscribers a non-digital option. It’s a low-cost venture for Äripäev, as it is filled with content that has already appeared online:
“We don’t do anything separate for them,” Mandel said.
The monthly magazine is part of a premium subscription package and doesn’t include any news or investigative stories; those remain Web-only. The cover stories are primarily lists and charts, such as The Richest 500 or the Top 100.
Currently, the more expensive premium subscriptions, which include the monthly magazine and access to video presentations, are falling faster than expected in December and January. Premium subscriptions are declining and comprise just one-eighth of the overall revenue, down from one-fifth last fall.
That means Äripäev is losing revenue from that segment and Mandel said that means they are thinking “quite intensively” about how to strengthen the premium package and get back on budget.