Managing subscriptions in 2026 is not about maximising a single metric. It is about walking the tightrope balancing structural tradeoffs and understanding what each position costs.

In February, I joined Mather for their Webinar “Navigating the Digital Subscription Landscape” (moderated by Ignaz van Hasselt), alongside Peter Doucette. 

We talked about how managing subscriptions today feels less like optimising a funnel and more like balancing opposing forces. And success is less about maximising individual KPIs and more about understanding how they interact.

Here are a few common tradeoffs and some revealing insights that may help you decide what to do:

1. Advertising vs. subscriptions: What if I told you 1% of users can generate 70% of revenue from both lines?

The news industry has debated advertising versus reader revenue for decades. The data from 317 news brands benchmarking with INMA shows the divide is less clear-cut than many assume.

Highly engaged subscribers are often the same users who create the most online advertising inventory.

Across the world, the median publisher sees 1% of users who subscribed generate 25% of pageviews. In upper-quartile brands, that share exceeds 41%. At Clarín in Argentina, 1% of users generated 72% of total revenue from both ads and subscriptions.

Why? Super users of media tend to be wealthier, better educated, and more politically and socially active than light users. No wonder these super users are also super consumers — the very ones who buy new cars, new clothes, go to restaurants, and fly on holidays. 

Subscriptions help you project quality and attract these valuable users, and then lock them in. You monetise the relationships through both subscriptions and advertising.

2. Volume growth vs. revenue growth: What if I told you those who prioritised volume growth in subscriptions in 2025 also grew revenue the fastest?

There is a common belief that publishers must choose between scaling subscriber numbers and protecting revenue. 

INMA’s analysis of large publishers (with at least 20,000 digital-only subscriptions) in 2025 showed the top 25% fastest volume growers (at least 12% year-on-year growth) were also the fastest revenue growers (at least 10.2% year-on-year growth).

What differentiated them was not looser paywalls or much lower prices. The difference was audience stability, which translated into stronger demand generation for conversions and higher engagement among subscribers. ARPU was slightly lower, but higher retention and therefore higher lifetime value compensated for it.

The real tradeoff is not volume versus revenue. It is fragile versus durable engagement.

3. Acquisition vs. retention: What if I told you up to 20% of new subscribers cancel within 24 hours?

Churn is often discussed as a late-stage problem. In practice, it is baked into acquisition.

During our discussion, Peter Doucette highlighted that a meaningful share of subscribers cancel within the first day. (For comparison, Piano reported 13% of subscribers who disabled auto-renew did so on their first day).

Retention is often tied to engagement thresholds. Many publishers find that three to five active days per month significantly increase renewal probability. 

At the same time, publishers frequently see non-behavioural signals correlate highly with retention, such as the reader’s wealth (e.g., signalled by device, operating system, or ZIP code), education (e.g., signalled by interests or articles read), payment method (e.g., direct debit vs. credit card).

In early stages, acquisition mechanics dominate the attention of subscription managers. As the customer base grows, segmentation and lifecycle management become more important.

In reality, retention is not a standalone tactic but rather an outcome which reflects the quality of the entire subscription system.

4. Reach vs. loyalty: What if I told you half of U.S. residents encountered news incidentally rather than actively seeking it?

Discovery patterns have shifted. Social media introduces U.S. consumers to news before television or online news sites or apps, per Reuters Institute’s 2025 survey.

Most news consumers are casual. Per INMA Benchmarks, 69% of users of a media news site visited only once a month in 4Q 2025, and 34% of paying subscribers have not visited even once!

No wonder 49% U.S. residents told Pew Research Center in 2026 they mostly came across news rather than actively looked for it.

The modern subscription journey may start on social media, move through search or brand recall, and only later evolve into habitual usage and willingness to pay. 

But even paying subscribers might behave like casual consumers if the news cycle is slow and they’re busy living their lives.

Publishers need broad distribution to build awareness and position the brand in people’s minds, and they need the reach later too – to refresh people’s memories and stay on top of their minds when something happens.

5. Individual KPIs vs. system health: What if I told you many plateauing publishers excel in individual metrics?

Subscription businesses rarely stall because one KPI collapses. More often, growth plateaus when metrics drift out of balance.

Strong acquisition paired with a short lifetime suggests onboarding weaknesses. Rising ARPU alongside falling penetration signals pricing pressure. High engagement with low conversion points to value communication gaps.

Composite diagnostics such as Mather’s Subscription Proficiency Index bring growth, engagement, conversion, churn, ARPU, and penetration into one view. 

In my experience, composite metrics are useful for tracking performance over time, comparing different brands or products, and clustering them to identify patterns.

They are though less actionable than individual metrics because if, let’s say, your SPI score is 61, how do you know what to do to increase it to 70?

While individual metrics are usually easier to understand and therefore easier to act on, the same metric means something very different depending on your subscription product’s stage of development.

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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