Today, I am writing about the shift from binary paywalls (“free vs. paid”) to dynamic models and analysing mixed signals about the “Trump bump” in demand.

If you have questions or suggestions, e-mail me at greg.piechota@inma.org or meet me at the free online Subscriptions Town Hall on December 4.

Dynamic paywalls gain momentum as publishers prioritise personalisation

One-fifth of participants of the INMA Subscriber Acquisition Master Class reported using a hybrid or dynamic paywall, with more than one-third planning to adopt them soon.

The recent master class was attended by 158 news professionals from 41 countries. 

While traditional models still dominate — 35% attendees used freemium and 27% used metres — the online survey revealed the largest ever share of hybrid or dynamic paywalls at 22%.

This 22% figure is confirmed in a larger sample of 252 news brands benchmarking with INMA, and it has quadrupled since 2020, per my estimates.

Shift to personalisation: Additionally, 38% master class attendees said they were currently switching to a hybrid or a dynamic model or plan to do it in the near future, signalling a shift in how news organisations approach targeting their offers.

This pivot reflects publishers’ maturity, a new ambition to personalise reader experiences in response to changing audience behaviours and economic pressures, advances in data analytics, and democratisation of paywall technologies by vendors.

At the INMA Media Subscription Summit in New York in February, personalisation was a top priority for 284 attendees.

Challenges for dynamic paywalls: For years, dynamic paywalls were a bit like driverless cars — everybody talked about them, but only few had seen them. 

• Many vendors promised fully autonomous systems, but they often meant different levels of automation and flexibility in setting rules around what offers to show to whom and when. 

• Segmenting users by propensity to buy was proven to lead to higher conversion rates than crude methods, but the low share of logged-in users and cookie depreciation limited the overall impact on sales.

• While heavy readers kick-started subscription programmes, they could not sustain the growth. As brands matured, they increasingly converted light and new readers, harder to segment by engagement. 

As a result, over the years, some INMA members reported their disappointment. Most stuck to simpler, traditional models like hard or freemium walls, as they showed offers to all readers regardless of how much was known about them.

The rise of registration walls: The first big shift came after privacy laws pushed tech companies to depreciate third-party cookies, and publishers scrambled to register users and build their first-party data chests for advertising purposes.

Some companies like Amedia in Norway or The New York Times achieved remarkable success registering and logging in most users. More persistent and consistent data about individual behaviours improved the precision of targeting ads and … subscription offers. 

For example, since 2019, while every first article one reads on the Times’ Web site is free, the second is behind a registration wall. This allows the in-house dynamic paywall to assign further amounts of free content individually.

The challenge is that, per INMA Benchmarks, the median news brand worldwide saw only 8% of its monthly users being registered in 3Q 2024.

The rise of AI: The second big shift came after advances in AI helped publishers to improve targeting paywalls contextually — and not only behaviourally.

At this year’s master class, Puneet Kukreja of Times Internet in India described how generative AI models from OpenAI allowed it to classify content robustly, cheaply, and at scale. 

Predictions about converting content supplemented a more traditional behavioural model and allowed targeting 70% of monthly users who were new to the site or anonymous. They would simply see an offer based on the characteristics of the article rather than the user.

Times Internet aspires to match the right user with the right article, at the right price, and at the right time. AI algorithms improve their predictions based on performance of the past matches.

In a very competitive market with thousands of free alternative news sources, the dynamic paywall allowed The Economic Times to double average subscription price while improving the conversion rate by more than 15%.

Times Internet developed their dynamic paywall in-house, and Kukreja said he regrets this route 20% of time — for example, when his seven people-strong team discovers another bug or a new employee needs to learn a complicated and undocumented system. 

He is however “happy,” he said, “80% of the time” when the paywall integrates well with the rest of the in-house tech stack (like a CMS or a CDP) or when they plug another brand like Times of India and play without increased cost.

Democratisation of dynamic paywalls: Most publishers don’t have ambitions or resources to build dynamic paywalls themselves, and they outsource. 

The Globe and Mail in Canada productised a similar dual paywall as Sophi AI. After selling the technology and its team to Mather, a consultancy in the United States, it is now offered to publishers around the world as a decision layer to be integrated with whatever paywall system they use.

The vendors — such as BlueConic, Chargebee, Mather, Piano, or Zuora — effectively democratise access to dynamic paywalls, and this third phenomenon likely explains the recent rise in adoption.

At the master class, Darya Ushakova of The Philadelphia Inquirer shared detailed performance data of their implementation of Mather’s dual paywall engine — it drove a 35% lift in direct paywall subscriptions compared to a control group. 

Together with other tactics such as a new pricing scheme (US$1 for six months), or hard-walling archives, the Inquirer’s dynamic paywall contributed to a 62% increase in average monthly starts and 2.35x increase in the total number of digital subscriptions in three years.

The sunset of one-size-fits-all paywalls: The spike in dynamic paywall adoption — from niche technology to mainstream — marks the rising maturity and sophistication in digital subscriptions.

Publishers see dynamic paywalls finally work, so many are moving beyond the binary choice of “free vs. paid” to more nuanced, AI-driven approaches that balance user willingness to pay, revenue optimization, and market realities.

Interested in personalisation? Hear from Harvard Business School’s David Edelman, author of “Personalised: Customer strategy in the age of AI” and our keynote speaker at the free online INMA Subscriptions Town Hall on December 4.

Mixed signals of another Trump bump in subscriptions 

A total 69% attendees of the INMA Subscriber Acquisition Master Class reported a U.S. presidential election-related spike in traffic; 21% saw a spike in subscription sales.

The November master class was attended by 158 news professionals from 41 countries. The survey result hit headlines on CNN’s Reliable Sources. 

Per Google Trends, interest in Donald Trump-related keywords in the U.S. in the election week was higher than at the previous election in 2016 and 2020. Trump’s victory elevated interest globally.

These are some of the first signals that another “Trump bump” is likely. 

Online traffic trends: At the same time, the campaign mobilised mostly Americans. In the third quarter, during the final months before the vote, INMA saw clearly higher demand for online news in North America but not internationally. 

Per INMA Benchmarks, online traffic to North American Web sites was almost as high as during the final months before the election in 2020.

The median North American news brand saw spikes in online users and sessions vs. the first quarter (22.4% and 19.4%, respectively), several times higher than internationally (5% and 3.9%, respectively).

Online subscription trends: Surprisingly, this higher demand for news during the campaign was not translated into conversions. 

In the third quarter of 2024, the median North American brand was selling only 71 digital subscriptions per 1 million online users, while it sold 203 subscriptions four years earlier. 

Around the election day, individual U.S. brands reported both gains and losses in subscriptions.

INMA tracks performance of 252 news brands worldwide, but we collect the data with delay. We’ll provide further benchmarks in the coming months.

History of news cycle bumps: In the past five years, we could clearly observe an impact of big news events on demand. 

In our global benchmarks, we saw the COVID bump, the 2020 U.S. election and its aftermath, and the start of war in Ukraine in 2022. 

The individual patterns of demand depend on how these events unfold. For example, sports tournaments and elections with winning incumbents often see a demand rising slowly until the final, and then quickly dropping. 

This time in the United States, the incumbent lost. The new president announced a number of changes in policies related to defence, trade, taxes, immigration, and government spending. These will impact millions, both in the U.S. and internationally.

So one could expect a multi-peak increase in demand: outcome of the vote different than in the polls, and then the subsequent rise in interest in new policies, and the drama that might follow.

Stock market investors seem to believe this is the case, as the share price of many U.S. news media companies rose after the election faster than the S&P 500 index, which tracks the overall performance of the U.S. stock market.

Interested in risks of selling subscriptions to audiences driven by noble causes? Read my analysis of The Washington Post boycott. 

Next in the Readers First Initiative

• On December 4, we are meeting for the free live-streamed INMA Subscriptions Town Hall. We’ll distill key learnings from 2024 around subscription ceilings, brand marketing, big news coverage, and personalisation. Last year, 972 colleagues attended. Register now.

• On March 10-14, 2025, we are meeting in person at the INMA Media Subscriptions Summit Week in Amsterdam. We’ll capture the winds of change in today’s subscription models across a two-day summit, a day of practical seminars, and an optional study tour. Book a seat. 

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 newsletters, Greg shares original research, analysis, and best practices in growing reader revenue.

E-mail Greg at greg.piechota@inma.org, message him on Slack, or meet him at the online Subscriber Acquisition Master Class in November.

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