Digital subscriptions have become a key revenue stream for news companies as they have primarily transitioned their revenue strategies into the digital realm, particularly with the decline of third-party cookies.

Media leaders spoke about subscriptions and how their companies are finding success in the contemporary media landscape during a  subscriptions workshop led by INMA Readers First Initiative Lead Greg Piechota at the recent INMA World Congress of News Media in London.

Corriere della Sera and El País maximise value

Corriere della Sera in Italy and El País in Spain have become two of Europe’s leading news brands following subscription models.

Corriere della Sera implemented its first paywall in 2016 and started prioritising a subscriber-centred strategy in 2018. It recently hit 600,000 subscribers.

Fabio Napoli, digital director of RCS Mediagroup (the holding company of Corriere della Sera), emphasised four Ps in pursuing success with the subscription model, starting with “product.”

“Every year we focus on launching new editorial products,” Napoli said.

The second is “price,” having to do with the pricing of the subscriptions. The company operates with a dynamic paywall model, which uses an algorithm that considers content score, user score, and advertising value to come up with an ideal strategy per individual.

“Every price scheme is optimised … and we can tailor it to maximise volume or value, depending on the goal,” Napoli said.

The third is “promotion,” centred around “creating consistent awareness of our credibility … and engaging new readers to spread our brand,” according to Napoli.

The fourth is “people,” emphasising having passionate individuals in the right jobs.

El País also uses a dynamic model to optimise the revenue from each individual.

“Our model means we are not spending if we don’t need to spend to convert [an individual to subscribing],” Luis Baena, chief marketing officer of El País parent Prisa Media, said.

“We also created a score that measures the contribution of each article to the subscription model,” Baena said. “I wanted to create something that would make the newsroom excited about subscriptions, where [the journalists] could rank themselves.”

Both Napoli and Baena also stressed the effectiveness of premium subscription models and bundling to maximise revenue.

Enticing new subscribers at The Financial Times

The Financial Times has recently experimented with single, paid products as a way to drive revenue and entice potential new subscribers. These products include newsletters as well as one six-week course by Claer Barrett on personal finance.

“The FT is an expensive product,” Erin O’Handley, senior product manager, said. “We need lower entry cost points for people to join FT.” 

The newsletters and the course provide a different price point for those who don’t need a full subscription or are interested in a specific topic, she said. Pulling in new audiences is one of the benefits of enabling the purchase of specific, individual FT products.

“[The course] brought in a more diverse audience, engaging more women and Millennials,” O’Handley said, adding that 76% of new paying users have never had a relationship with the FT before.

O’Handley hopes that these users then eventually also go on to buy a full FT subscription.

Piano’s algorithm balances ad, subscription revenue

“Paywalls often force publishers to choose between ad revenue and subscription revenue,” Michael Silberman, executive vice president media strategy at Piano, said. “The ideal paywall would only stop the users that are willing to pay. It would be super targeted.”

Piano has created a model that predicts a user’s likelihood to subscribe, through which a company can then conclude whether to show a paywall and aim to drive subscription revenue or whether to strive for ad revenue.

“We realised what we needed to do was to look at total revenue,” Silberman said. “It’s about finding the balance [between subscriptions and ad revenue] and optimising both.”

Piano looks to achieve this using its propensity model, which has added 28% increased paywall efficiency for its users, according to Silberman.

Piano has also looked to replace the old media metric RPM (revenue per page), which Silberman described as “an entirely useless metric,” instead using an algorithm to decipher which articles contribute the most value for a publisher.

Engaging niche audiences at Eurozet and The Scientific American

Polish media outlet Eurozet, has made a name for itself with its focus and tremendous success in audio.

“Podcasting makes consumers loyal,” Marcin Kowalczyk, group digital managing director, said. “Our subscribers spend 24 hours a month listening to our podcast. That’s a lot of attention time.”

Eurozet has recently taken to YouTube to garner further engagement, where it releases four long-form videocasts a month, along with shorter videos.

“YouTube is very useful and effective in reaching out for a new audience,” Kowalczyk said, adding that the future lies in audio and AI.

Indeed, Eurozet is already using AI to enhance their business, having implemented text-to-speech to enable users to listen to every article on the website, including being able to queue them.

Meanwhile, The Scientific American is undergoing a revolution in its newsroom, 80% of whose readers currently still access the media company through print.

“We’re 178 years old but in the last two years we have shifted into more of a start-up culture,” Chris Monello-Johnson, director of marketing, said. “We’re experiencing a digital revolution. We’re engaging younger, more diverse audiences and making science fun and more accessible.”

The company is now focused on driving engagement online through various means, including TikTok, a new podcast, and a revamped daily newsletter.

NWT Media engages younger audiences

Sweden’s NWT Media is a traditional company, one in which the digital transformation “hasn’t been top priority,” according to Patric Hamsch, deputy head of media.

Recently, the company has prioritised expanding its digital reach and placed a great emphasis on engaging younger audiences.

“We learned a lot about their interests and passions and built our content about this, but only doing stories … we created an internal focus group of people under 30,” Hamsch said. “We need to put a lot of effort to build our brand with young people.”

Creating premium teams, a “collaboration between different departments to work with a story to make it as high-performing as possible,” has been crucial to some of NWT’s success.

“When we create premium teams, we set goals and objectives for specific stories,” Hamsch said.

One premium team, focused on engaging younger audiences, was centred around covering students’ graduation, which Hamsch explains is a big deal in Sweden.

“For two months, we went everywhere [with the students]. We went to every party … even to Cyprus,” Hamsch said. “We got extremely good results in our ambition to connect. It worked. This is what can happen when you put specialists together in a premium team.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .