There is no single approach to subscriptions that work for all news media companies, but the whole industry benefits as outlets share insights into their transformation strategies.

During the Subscriptions Town Hall, hosted as part of INMA’s Readers First Initiative, media leaders shared successes and strategies to grow their subscriptions businesses.

Helsingin Sanomat builds subscriptions-first newsroom

Erja Yläjärvi, Helsingin Sanomat’s senior editor-in-chief, stressed the “back to basics” mindset necessary to turn the company into a subscriber-first organisation.

“Everything has to be subscription-driven,” she said, giving an example: “This year, we [announced] publicly that we don’t do clickbait headlines at all. We will only do headlines where you see what the article’s about.”

This meant there was less incentive to click headlines, but the Web site traffic was still maintained. Saying no to clickbait didn’t affect Helsingin at all.

“Those kinds of tangible things, this is what we really want to sell. And people pay good money for that.”

When it comes to goals in the newsroom, Yläjärvi said they don’t have team-based goals anymore. Rather, goals are based around three areas: society, culture, and lifestyle.

“Teams don’t have to obsess about the numbers,” Yläjärvi said. “You have to have goals, but I think it’s more about the culture.”

Le Monde reaches young audiences

Le Monde CEO Louis Dreyfus attributes the company’s successful digital transformation to a long-term strategy anchored in journalism, independence, and a refusal to let external market pressures weaken the core product.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Le Monde’s growth strategy is its view of generational loyalty. Dreyfus emphasised that future subscribers need to encounter Le Monde long before they are ready to pay. That means meeting them where they are: TikTok, Snapchat, social video, and mobile platforms.

On Snapchat alone, Le Monde has 1.4 million French teenage followers. Dreyfus has already seen the long-term payoff. After following the brand for “four to five years” on Snapchat, a portion of these young readers now subscribe to Le Monde as adults. If just 10% to 15% ultimately convert, he said, “I will get a great return on investment.”

The strategy is simple: Be present on their “playing field,” and when they turn 25 or 30, subscribing will feel natural, not a leap.

The Philadelphia Inquirer takes a one-offer approach

Since 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer has taken an intensive approach to on-site sales, rotating discounted offers between 12 and 26 weeks. However, this created a lot of work, overhead, friction, and confusion because it was not aligned. Eventually the team asked if this approach was really working.

The answer was largely no, so the team pivoted. As Darya Ushakova, chief marketing officer, put it, they decided to “pull a Boston Globe.” They would create one offer to rule them all, rather than a lot of various offers.

In early 2024 the one-offer switch was made, to an offer of six months of digital access for $1 USD. They knew this would entail a conscious acceptance that it would result in a dip in revenue in the short term since no revenue would be realised from these new subscribers for six months.

“That offer consistently performs 20%, 30%, 40% better, depending on the asset and the audience,” Darya Ushakova said. “So, it certainly made more sense, and I can tell you the amount of time and energy we’re saving by just having the one offer, not going back and forth.”

Two years in, the one-offer approach seems to be working. Retention is better compared to other offers, as well. Ushakova pointed out that the new model and its performance is working against an audience decline of 20-30% that was previously incurred.

“That trend line going up [incrementally], that’s no small deal.”

Global study highlights importance of loyal audiences

When Paulo Celso Pereira, executive editor of O Globo, boarded a plane to New York for an executive programme at CUNY, he carried with him a question that had haunted his 21-year career in Brazilian journalism: What does it take to build a subscription business that lasts? The answer, he soon discovered, required a global investigation.

From the outset, Pereira realised “there is no silver bullet to solve this problem.” Yet despite differences across various companies he visited, patterns emerged. And the first, he says, is universal across every industry: A strong product is non-negotiable. Another truth quickly revealed itself: Reach is not the same as revenue.

“It’s easy to address all kinds of readers, but not all readers are open to paying for news,” Pereira said.

In fact, the vast majority never will. On both print newsstands and digital homepages, millions may glance your way, but only a small percentage represent real subscription potential.

The conclusion is clear: Sustainable businesses are built around the loyal minority, not the indifferent majority.

“We need to know exactly whom we can attract and whom we cannot attract,” he stressed.

These loyalists come directly to Web sites, prefer apps, hold brand affinity, and engage deeply with content — not through aggregators or search, but through habit.

How AI is reshaping the economics of publishing

Have you ever considered bots, AI agents, and the like as part of your audience? Do you know if these machines make up a small or large part of your consumer population? Can you monetise that online population?

“If your audience is now a mix of humans and machines then your monetisation strategy also has to work for humans and machines. And that’s where I believe micropayments, aggregated and invisible and usage-based, become not just interesting but essential,” Cosmin Ene, chief executive officer of Supertab, said.

“If machines are becoming consumers, then we need a way for machines to request access, check licensing, and pay, ideally automatically.”

Ene envisions this model in three steps:

1. Publishers set the rules of engagement the machine could understand including pricing and licensing terms.
2. Bots and agents check the license. Supertab can accept or decline licensing requests and settles payments
3. Payment is the last step. “Everytime AI uses your content, you get paid,” Ene said.

The future of publishing and the media industry at large is in the midst of a shift on both sides of the marketplace. Cosmin Ene encouraged publishers to think about their non-human consumers and the possibilities of business models that include AI, as consumers and to support revenue generation.

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