Years ago, the major international media decided to implement a paywall on their websites as a digital business model. In some cases, like the New York Times, the decision was made more than a decade ago. EL PAÍS, which launched it in May 2020, has recently exceeded 250,000 subscribers, of which 214,000 are digital exclusives. In all cases, those titles that have managed to lead in their respective markets emphasize the importance of value-added differentiated content and investment in newsrooms.
‘The New York Times’, much more than news
With the takeover of the internet fashion game Wordle earlier this year, the New York Times sent a clear message to the market: the strategic importance of hobbies for its successful business model. Entertainment, in short, as a complement to the pure and simple information that the New Yorker newspaper is emblematic of.
The data confirm that the business model is on the right track. If the NYT added a million more digital subscribers in the annus horribilis of the pandemic, this year, the year of economic uncertainty and unleashed inflation, is also progressing: Q2 added 180,000 digital subscribers — 70% more than a year earlier in the same quarter Period of 2021― reaching a total of 9.17 million. The goal is to reach 15 million by the end of 2025 (five million more than forecast a year ago). Online advertising suffered slightly this quarter, reflecting the turbulence in the economy.
Headquarters of The New York Times, October 27. Jakub Porzycki (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In addition to hobbies, Ader Cooking Recipes ―both products with a subscription fee not included in the basic package and with more than a million subscribers― and the purchase of sports website The Athletic catapulted the dimension of the NYT’s subscriber community.
The header is one of the mirrors in which the industry media see themselves, both for the business model and for the quality of their information. The clear commitment to new forms of information (multimedia, podcast, data) has also strengthened the digital journey of the newspaper. The foundations of the digital transformation were laid in a 2014 internal report that set the course for the future of the newspaper. This report was led by AG Sulzberger, the newspaper’s current editor, and warned that the newspaper was losing the digital battle.
Most subscribers come from the digital edition. With 761,000 individual subscribers, the still highly regarded print edition is 7% fewer than in the second quarter of the previous year. Since launching the paywall in 2011, the newspaper has focused on “becoming the premier subscription service for all English speakers who want to understand and interact with the world. Games are an important part of that strategy,” the header recalled in a statement when it bought Wordle.
Buying the game for a “seven-figure sum” — that is, at least a million dollars — helped broaden the range of hobbies with a potential audience of at least two million people, the users it had when operations closed . So they made sure Wordle would stay free. You don’t need to charge any fees to make it profitable as it brings huge traffic and data from hundreds of thousands of users which translates into money as well. Diversification of digital entertainment offerings also goes through broadening the composition of the creator base: there are increasing numbers of women, members of the LGTBIQ collective or ethnic minorities to bring diversity to their hobbies. Through Maria Antonia Sanchez Vallejo.
‘Financial Times’, a newspaper that is no longer just a British one
In April 2006, then-Financial Times director Lionel Barber wanted to sign renowned financial reporter Paul Murphy from rival newspaper The Guardian, who had amassed dozens of lunches and breakfasts with City of London protagonists. and always got good exclusives. He offered him a column in the salmon pages of a publication as revered as it was outdated, whose digital subscribers then numbered fewer than 80,000, while more than 400,000 paper copies were sold. But Murphy wasn’t interested in the column, he was only interested in digital journalism. The business journalist was not only responsible for the successful blog FT Alphaville, but also wrote a key document for Barber to understand the necessary editorial strategy in the Internet age.
“It caused a fundamental shift in my thinking,” says Barber in his memoir. “In the past, FT journalists, like Moses, presented the Tablets of the Law to an open-minded audience. But the news business became democratized faster and faster. Readers could reply. Our work as administrators and publishers would continue to be essential. But going forward, let’s use technology to engage readers like never before, thereby driving subscriptions up.”
In March 2022, the FT reached one million digital subscribers, adding more than 200,000 subscribers to the print version. It is no longer a British newspaper but an English-language product with a worldwide audience: more than half of its subscribers live outside the UK and Americans account for 20%.
It was a process of trial and error in which the newspaper not only bet on the quality of its information, but also began to understand that its relationship with its readers – and the information it began to have about their reading habits – was changing significantly changed rules of the game.
“We started analyzing the data we had access to. When we were building models – to improve subscriptions or to keep them – there was one factor that was consistently much more relevant than the rest: consumption. Once we discovered the relationship between that level of consumption and the value it created for the consumer, we had a subscription renewal forecaster. It was also a wonderful realization for the editorial board: Consumption of journalism directly affects business success,” Tom Betts, the FT data director, told the newspaper itself.
Leaders used the new flow of data to understand a new relationship that was beginning to involve more senders and receivers. It was not enough to analyze the number of visits. When did the reader last visit the page? How often did you access? How much information volume did you use? Without sacrificing good journalism, which is still the foundation, those responsible at FT began to understand the needs and desires of customers and were able to align the newspaper’s teams – writing, data, sales – towards common goals . New products—videos, podcasts, in-depth articles—and personalized customer retention offers.
And a key discovery: “Quality Reading”. A tool that shows the reading time of each article, aimed squarely at users who are most likely to become FT fans. The answer that explains why, contrary to popular belief, it is not the most read news that generates the most customers, but rather those that appeal directly to the seriousness and rigor that users expect from the media they trust. Through Raphael de Miguel.
“Le Monde”, less is more
Founded in 1944 at the end of the Second World War, Le Monde is the reference newspaper in France with what can be described as a progressive editorial approach, a very loyal readership and a particularity: it is still an afternoon newspaper. The paper edition arrives at 1 p.m. on kiosks “and subscribers’ mobile phones”. The product is also atypical and might be one of the keys to its success: a limited number of articles (which has been reduced), including plenty of proprietary information, and an emphasis on analysis and reporting. One of Le Monde’s trademarks on the web is its live shows and the La Matinale application, which presents readers with the most important news and articles first thing in the morning.
Mobile app “Le Monde” Gema García
Le Monde currently has more than 465,000 digital-only subscribers and announced months ago that it had reached 500,000, including the print edition. It took almost 12 years to reach that number since the digital subscription system was introduced. Management has set a goal of reaching one million subscribers by 2025, as the newspaper published in an article in late 2021.
As with other international media, digital subscriptions have skyrocketed in 2020 during the pandemic lockdowns. In 2019, shortly before the 200,000 mark was broken, the then editor-in-chief Luc Bronner explained this strategy in a message on the social network Twitter. He explained that in the previous two years the number of articles published in the masthead had decreased by 25%. At the same time, the number of journalists had increased to around 500 (in 2010 it was around 350). And creating fewer reports had allowed them to spend more time preparing them. Bronner concluded, “Result? The Internet audience has progressed, and so has the circulation of the newspaper in print and on the Internet”. Through Marc Bassets.
Between 2018 and 2019, the world saw a 14% decrease in the total number of articles published (-25% in 2 years). Plus de journalistes (pres de 500 désormais), plus de temps pour enqueter. Result? Web audiences have progressed (+11%) with the circulation (print and web) of the magazine (+11%).
— Luc Bronner (@lucbronner) January 20, 2020
‘Clarín’, a hit in Spanish
In May, Ricardo Roa, editor-in-chief of Argentina newspaper Clarín, announced that the economic contribution of readers has exceeded that of advertising for the first time since the newspaper’s inception. At that time, the newspaper had half a million subscribers. “Paywall collection was higher than advertising [anuncios], which forces greater concern for the quality of the content. People are being inundated with news and demanding original materials with their own exclusive approaches,” Roa said. With a generalist profile, Clarín was born in the middle of the last century as a newspaper aimed at the emerging urban middle class and currently has more than 550,000 digital subscribers, according to data from Javier Kraviez, Digital Business Director at Grupo Clarín. The newspaper implemented the Payment Wall in 2017.
Clarín was the Argentine newspaper that devoted the most resources to reporting on the war in Ukraine, with four teams on the ground. Argentina’s media pays little attention to foreign news – the only exception being the centenary La Nación, Clarín’s biggest rival – partly because of a local fan base, partly because of chronic dollar shortages. In addition to searching abroad, sections have recently been added in which Clarín Specials stands out, dedicated to in-depth journalism and research. Added to this commitment to original content, which Roa defended, was the commercial side: in an environment of high inflation, Kraviez highlights the success of the 365 card, an initiative that gives subscribers discounts on purchases and shows. Also Corporate Subscription Agreements, “which generate significant leaps in numbers”.
Using a model that activates message blocking based on each reader’s consumption habits, Clarín accelerated its subscriber count from July 2021, when the number rose from 350,000 to the current record. 25% are orders that come from abroad. Through Federico Rivas Molina.