In this newsletter, I am sharing how Sweden’s largest news brand cracked digital subscriptions, and I offer a game plan for covering top 2024 events.

If you have questions or suggestions, e-mail me today at greg.piechota@inma.org or meet in person at the INMA Media Innovation Week next week in Antwerp, Belgium.

From selling recipes to news: Aftenbladet’s two-decade journey into paywalls

Doubling revenue from digital subscriptions in the past four years, the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet provides a blueprint for success and shares all of its pivots since launching in 2003.

Aftonbladet.se is a primary destination for the news-hungry Swedes, reaching 4 million unique visitors daily in a country of 10 million. 

In mid-September, this paywall pioneer enjoyed 249,000 digital-only subscribers, a slice of 1.2 million that its parent company, Schibsted, amassed across Sweden and Norway.

INMA interviewed Ted Kudinoff, head of Aftonbladet Plus, in the morning after his product’s 20th birthday party in September. Peer executives from all over the world sent the recorded wishes on video. (Your INMA researcher rapped while wrapped in the AI-generated bunny costume.)

Lessons from the trenches: “You have to be brave and curious,” said Kudinoff when asked for the biggest learnings from two decades. 

1. Focus on charging for journalism rather than add-ons: “It’s our core business, our DNA, so go there and take the money.”
2. Get a buy-in from the top, set clear goals, and align everyone behind the subscription: “If your newsroom doesn’t support the strategy, you will never succeed.”
3. Follow your readers: “Listen closely and adapt to their changing lives, as we did when moving to mobile, video, or bundles.”

Never waste a crisis: Business model innovations are often born out of necessity. The 2000-2001 Internet bubble crash decimated advertising in the Nordics. Aftonbladet realised it needed revenue streams beyond digital ads and print. 

When launched in 2003, the subscription service Aftonbladet Plus was seen as a side project, not core to the business. It offered lifestyle fare like recipes, dating tips, travel guides, and not its signature news content.

“At the time,” Kudinoff quotes the now-retired visionary founder of Aftonbladet Plus Kalle Jungkvist, “the mindset was: You can’t charge for online news.”

No wonder: It was a decade before The New York Times launched its paywall in 2011, and the industry followed. In the early 2000s, only The Wall Street Journal and few other business brands dared to charge for online.

From recipes to breaking news: The turning point was the debut of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and the rise of mobile Web and apps that followed. 

Kudinoff became Aftonbladet’s mobile editor in 2009: “We saw news, sports and entertainment becoming big on mobile, and people paying for mobile apps.”

In 2013, Kudinoff took charge of online subscriptions and put some news, entertainment, and sports behind the paywall — the longer articles, in-depth and exclusive. 

Today, 30% of articles on Aftonbladet’s homepage are paid. Major events, like elections, drive traffic spikes and boost subscription sales. A whopping 90% of sales are organic, primarily via the locked articles. 

Data helps to shape Aftonbladet’s strategy. Editors learn what articles attract new and existing subscribers: investigative and expert journalism, product tests and guides, insider sports, and health advice.

The user experience is personalised — subscribers see a different homepage than non-subscribers; readers interested in sports or health might see those stories elevated.

From a corner to the whole pitch: In the beginning, a dedicated desk of 15-20 journalists prepared all the Plus stories. Their focus helped to learn what worked best and delivered early results, but this approach was a barrier to scale further. 

By 2020 and the pandemic spike in demand for quality journalism, the responsibility for growing subscriptions and the know-how spread across a 250-people-strong newsroom. 

Today, every news desk has Plus goals. A dedicated conversion desk optimises the selection of Plus stories on the homepage. 

“It’s important that everyone understands this business because it is key to our future,” explained Kudinoff. 

Balancing the subscriber volume and revenue: At one point, the number of digital subscribers to Aftonbladet peaked at 300,000. It then stabilised around 250,000, of which almost half have been subscribers for at least two years. 

“Some churn is natural, especially after promotional campaigns. If you want to reduce churn, stop selling,” joked Kudinoff. “At the moment, the volume matters less to us than revenue, but we discuss the balance every six months.” 

Since 2003, the monthly rate for the Plus subscription has steadily increased from US$2 to US$13. In the past four years alone, per Aftonbladet CEO and editor-in-chief Lena Samuelsson, this translated into doubled average revenue per subscriber and an impressive 100% growth in total revenue from digital subscriptions. 

Kudinoff believes Netflix and other streaming companies helped to set the reference point for customers. The cost of Netflix that launched in Sweden in 2012, a decade after Aftonbladet, is from US$6.99 to US$19.99 per month.

The future of digital subscriptions: When stopped by the paywall, Aftonbladet readers can today choose between the Plus subscription or pay double (about US$27) for a Super Package. 

That bundle, one of many launched across Europe this year, includes another Schibsted national brand Svenska Dagbladet, news aggregator Omni, and podcast aggregator Podme.

Kudinoff sees a future where subscribers can add other services such as television or magazines, including the ones Schibsted doesn’t own. (However, in September Schibsted acquired 10% of Viaplay, a Nordic video streaming company.)

The head of Aftonbladet Plus believes future digital bundles will come in many flavours as many readers value flexibility, contrasting with traditional cable TV’s all-you-can-eat content model.

He stresses that exclusive news content remains the primary driver of subscriptions over everything else.

For more lessons from the paywall pioneers, read or watch the interview with Norwegian academics who studied the news industry’s shift to the Readers First paradigm.

Gear up for a big news year: how to capitalise on major 2024 events

2024 is shaping up to be a huge year for news publishers. Expect higher demand for online news and for subscriptions, and start planning your journalism and marketing.

The engagement with online news, measured by the number of users, sessions, or pageviews on news sites, has fallen in 2023 to pre-pandemic levels.

Based on historical patterns, news publishers can though expect a significant increase in demand the next year, with several high-profile elections, a summer Olympics, and other major sporting events on the calendar:

• Elections in 2024: e.g., presidential in the U.S., Russia and Taiwan, general in India, in the U.K., and parliamentary in the E.U.

• Global sports events in 2024: e.g., the Summer Olympics, the UEFA European Football Championship, and the ICC World Cup tournament.

With planning and promotion, major news events can help news outlets engage readers, demonstrate value of quality journalism, and grow digital subscriptions.

Here’s how editors and marketeers can prepare:

1. Get the fundamentals right: Per INMA Benchmarks, some news brands see much higher spikes in traffic when big news breaks than their peers. 

These are usually brands with a reputation for breaking news coverage and analysis. The reputation drives direct visits from its mobilised readership. Big news events also attract casual readers to the well known brands with a broad distribution — established in search engines, social networks, and present in aggregators.

As a result, the fastest-growing brands saw three times higher increase in reach during COVID than the slow growers. They also enjoyed up to five times higher check-out efficiency, suggesting mature and optimised payment flows.

Think of soda drinks during a hot summer: The heat drives the need, but brand awareness, distribution, affordability, and frictionless purchase drive sales.

Therefore, the success during big news events is not pure luck. It is usually an outcome of years of investment in journalism, product, marketing, and agile organisation that allow all those collaborate and experiment at scale. 

As the news cycle makes or breaks the news business, timing matters. INMA Benchmarks analysed the performance of new paywalls starting in 2019-2020 and found that whoever launched before the pandemic had at least twice as many subscribers after 12 months than whoever was late — and the best performers had six times more subscribers.

2. Differentiate your product and brand ahead of the big news event: A review of the INMA case studies showed the leading brands prepared for the specific big news events well in advance.

They mobilised the newsroom, added staff or freelancers, and increased output of the relevant investigative and enterprise journalism, as, for example, The Washington Post did before 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

They invested in brand advertising focused on differentiation, as The New York Times did in 2017 with its Truth Is Hard campaign and others that followed.

They listened to readers’ needs and answered their questions through SEO-led pieces and long-shelf features, as Norwegian Aftenposten did with its election guides and quizzes in 2017.

Think of both mental and physical availability. Studies show most consumers don’t think much of brands until they need them; then they recall the brands they have fresh memories of and buy the ones most easily available.

3. Unleash a cyclone: Traditionally, news publishers engaged readers hoping they would convert one day. Starting in 2019, INMA identified a novel approach, often compared to a cyclone. 

The fast-growers made the conversion fast and easy, with tight paywalls but hugely discounted offers, and focused on engaging readers after they converted. They extended the runway with long trails. By now, this tactic has been adopted by most of the top 50 news subscription brands worldwide.

Some publishers, such as Dagens Nyheter in Sweden, experimented with opening the site for everyone who registered — for example, for three weeks leading to the election night. Out of 55,000 who signed up for a free trial in 2018, 18,000 eventually started paying, and 10,000 stayed customers two years later. This tactic performed so well that Dagens Nyheter repeated it at the next elections, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

Think of news subscriptions as experience goods: One doesn’t really know their worth until tried. Sampling stimulates trials and learning during trials drives future demand.

Based in the case studies from Bild in Germany and The Boston Globe in the U.S., finding the most profitable combination of the trial length and the discount takes a lot of testing, but then publishers are able to deploy a new promotion overnight when an opportunity emerges. 

In general, the cyclone’s long-term success hinges on the effectiveness of the publisher’s retention programme, and that includes robust onboarding, engagement monitoring, and proactive churn prevention.

4. Plan, but get ready to ditch the plan when needed: The longer newsrooms prepare for an event, the more content they cook and keep in the fridge. 

Editor of the Times of London told INMA that a tighter package of stories worked best online rather than a broader one in print. And print supplements didn’t need to go online at all.

Readers’ interests also shift quickly. For example, two days after Queen Elizabeth’s death, few wanted to read about her life. And the best-performing articles looked forward and were solution-orientated — when Charles becomes King, how to watch the funeral.

Think about your editorial plan as an iterative process with a feedback loop based on data about how your readers interact with content on your site, but also what they search for, share, or comment.

Per Chartbeat’s analysis, some formats proved to be the most effective across the world during Brexit, COVID, or the war in Ukraine — live blogs or infographics led the rankings of the most-read content and engaged readers for longer times than other types of content. 

Publishers may add e-mail newsletters to their tried-and-true toolkit. It’s the second-best performing channel for loyal readers after your homepage, per Piano, and many editors told INMA about the success of their ad-hoc newsletters around big news events — from La Repubblica to the Financial Times.

How are you preparing for the 2024 big news events? E-mail me at greg.piechota@inma.org. 

About this newsletter

Today’s newsletter is written by Grzegorz “Greg” Piechota, INMA’s researcher-in-residence and lead for the Readers First Initiative. In his letters, Greg shares original research, analysis, and best practices in growing reader revenue.

E-mail Greg at greg.piechota@inma.org, message him on Slack, meet him at the next online meet-up or in person at the INMA Media Innovation Week next week in Antwerp, Belgium.

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