World Association of News Publishers


Reader Revenue

Reader Revenue

As income from advertising dwindles, more publishers are increasing their efforts to boost revenues from readers. Strategies and business models vary, but lessons learned are coming in almost daily. Here is our resource centre to discover best-practice, challenges and opportunities through our various activities.

In the Blogs

During WAN-IFRA’s recent Asian Media Leaders eSummit, Chartbeat’s Senior Director of Customer Education, Jill Nicholson, discussed their analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on global and regional media across coverage, traffic and referral sources....

As advertising revenues for news publishers around the world have continued to plummet, more publishers are trying to drive reader revenue through digital subscriptions. Here’s what three publishers based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Norway are doing.

WAN-IFRA, FTI Consulting and Google are announcing the launch of the APAC GNI Subscriptions Lab at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Leaders eSummit. The Lab is an intensive four-month program to help eight different news publishers from the Asia-Pacific region strengthen digital subscriptions...

The Utah-based Salt Lake Tribune has undergone a remarkable transformation in its business operations during the past year, becoming the first US daily newspaper to officially move from for-profit to nonprofit status. It also established an endowment fund.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for the business side of the news media industry, what has been heartening is the increased attempts of publishers to directly reach out to their audiences through curated editorial formats.

Everyone is trying to predict what the fallout of the ongoing pandemic will look like for publishers. Difficult to do. Even major companies like PriceWaterhouseCoopers have delayed their annual Media Outlook (usually published in June) with the uncertainty lingering. But publishers, editors and...

Understanding the needs of their readers has long been important to news publishers who want to grow their audiences and convert casual readers into paying subscribers. As advertising income has largely evaporated in recent years, and even more so over the past few months, publishers are placing...

In a wide-ranging conversation touching on many major newsroom topics, Roula Khalaf, the Editor of the Financial Times, told Jane Barrett of Reuters, and the global online audience for WAN-IFRA’s World Media Leaders eSummit, how the FT has been navigating the pandemic, how it continues to...

The third and fourth meetings in the timeline of the Tables Stakes programme are devoted to comparing participants’ progress: teams explain to one another how they are advancing toward their performance challenges, including their first wins along the way. London’s meeting was the third time the...

More than just a silver lining during a crisis of our lifetime, newsrooms are finding the engagement and subsequent trust they are forging with their audiences today as a sturdy building block for their future. Three Spanish editors echoed that during a WAN-IFRA webinar last week.

When news publishers talk about digital subscriptions, they often tend to focus on the volume, or the number, of digital subscribers they have or are trying to get, but for Mitch Pugh, Executive Editor of The Post and Courier in South Carolina, the crucial number around digital subscriptions is...

This article covers the projects shortlisted for the Best Paid Content Strategy category of WAN-IFRA’s 2020 North American Digital Media Awards.

As part of its European Digital Media Awards competition this year, WAN-IFRA introduced a Members' Choice Award in the category of Best Paid Content Strategy. The three finalists showcased their successful strategies during a webinar last week.

Leading Swedish daily news publisher Dagens Nyheter (DN) has seen sharp increases in registered users and digital subscribers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hindu Group (THG), a 141-year-old brand, was the first English-language Indian newspaper to go digital in 1995. Armed with a critical mass of online readers and a user-friendly online payment infrastructure, the company implemented a soft paywall in February 2019, and a metered...

"In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity..." Right? The Dallas Morning News in the US is taking that to heart with the COVID-19 pandemic. “This may be the best chance we’ve ever had to articulate our value proposition,” said DMN's Chief Product Officer Mike Orren.

At the recent Digital Media India conference, Rohan Tiwary of Google Asia Pacific, offered updates on some of the company's ongoing efforts through their Google News Initiative, including training journalists and AMP, and also highlighted some of their data and subscription...

India's ManoramaOnline, the digital arm of Malayala Manorama, delivers news from Kerala to more than 30 million Malayalis every month.

What do you do when subscriptions and advertising are not enough to sustain your newsroom? After obtaining nonprofit status, The Salt Lake Tribune can now be supported with tax-deductible donations, while an affiliated nonprofit foundation aims to support journalistic projects across the state...

With local journalism in crisis, we have no choice but to radically reform our news and information systems, argues Victor Pickard, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

About eight months ago, the German publishing house DuMont began using paid content at their Cologne-based news brands, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Kölnische Rundschau. In this article, Carsten Groß, Managing Director at DuMont, offers some of their top takeaways to date.
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Investigative journalism pays off for Germany's leading quality daily as it hits 100,000 digital subs in January, writes Editor in Chief Wolfgang Krach.

"Our primary acquisition driver today is our content," says Aftenposten's Sidney Glastad. "Our paywall is where we get about 70 percent of our web sales, and that makes it really important for us to understand what kind of content converts and how long people stay on different types of content....

On WAN-IFRA’s recent Scandinavian Study Tour, a group of 20 news media executives visited some of the top newsrooms in Norway and Sweden to learn more about their digital subscription strategies.

With more than a million registered lawyers, millions of lawsuits, and thousands of law firms, the Brazilian society is very judicialised. Sensing a market opportunity, a group of journalists who previously worked for national media outlets came together in 2014 to launch JOTA, a news site...

A new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism lays out some key trends and predictions for the year 2020.  



The year 2019 was a period of slowdown around the globe. The impact was felt in the news media industry, which had already been going through a not-so-easy transition period from print to digital. Lower spend from advertisers, along with other factors such as reduced consumer spending and...

Scandinavian media group Schibsted has made no secret of its goal to generate close to €100 million in digital reader revenue at some point next year. Here’s how its quality daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden is doing its part.

Dagens Nyheter in Sweden has undergone huge transformational change – overhauling its newsroom’s structure and culture, and making digital reader revenue a key component of not only its business model but its editorial strategy as well.

Earlier this year, Belgium's Mediahuis group, which owns a variety of media properties in its home country as well as the Netherlands, acquired Dublin-based Independent News & Media, the leading newspaper and...

Taking an “Audiences First” approach has been crucial to a remarkable revenue increase for the Barcelona-based newspaper ARA, says the company's chief revenue & innovation officer, Georgina Ferri...

As reader habits have changed in Asia and elsewhere, the importance of print media as a source of news has declined in recent years. There is a need for news publishers to adapt to a new business model to sustain the...

Shifting strategies toward embracing digital transformation in the 21st century boosted the Financial Times to more than a million subscribers in 2019, Nashua Gallagher told attendees of WAN-IFRA's recent Digital Media Asia conference in Hong Kong.

UK-based journalism outlet Tortoise is placing its members at the centre of its editorial strategy, regularly inviting them into the newsroom to share their diverse experience and expertise.

A strong focus on a “reader-first” circulation model has helped The Economist grow its reader revenues by 50 percent while doubling its gross margin in the past five years.

A South African spends more money, in a lifetime, on communication than on health or education. The country has a high penetration rate of smart phones, which unfortunately does not translate to cheap data rates.

“If you are too protective of your print, your digital will never grow,” said Geoff Tan, Managing Director, market development, SPH Magazines.

“The print media industry in India needs to reinvent the way we approach and onboard new readers,” said Pawan Agarwal, Deputy MD & CEO, DB Corp, India.

As publishers turn to subscription revenue to shore up their revenue strategies – from the largest international audiences down to the local publishers – they are each grappling with the constantly changing issues of tech and data.

“We don't do anything without an audience opportunity and a revenue opportunity,” Robertson Barrett, President of Digital Media at Hearst Newspapers, told participants at WAN-IFRA's recent ...

While the number of news consumers paying for online content has seen only small increases, François Nel, the director of the Journalism Leaders Programme, says there is still cause for optimism about the future of news publishing.

The past 10 to 12 years have been tough for many local news publishers: print revenues have fallen; consumers are...

A new report from WAN-IFRA examines how news media companies in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico are experimenting with their revenues and adapting business models to safeguard press freedom.

As The Atlantic ramps up its plans to launch a subscription model, the venerable American magazine has been restructuring its staffing units in order to better align its business model with readers' needs.

The marketplaces of East Africa are changing, but there is an opportunity for media organisations and digital publishers to get ahead of the curve and tap into new revenue streams, says Leonie Elverfeldt, Managing Director of Ringier Africa Digital Publishing in East...

With more than 100 daily newspapers and related web sites spread across the United States, Gannett has the enviable luxury to test and tweak its evolving digital subscription strategy across its group.

Digital advertising alone will not provide a sustainable future for digital news in Africa. According to Nic Newmansenior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, news publishers will need a...

Wendy Metcalfe is not your average editor-in-chief. For starters, not only does she oversee editorial operations, she’s also in charge of marketing and customer service – "essentially anything that touches the subscriber," she says.

[VIDEO INSIDE] In a standing-room only session at the World News Media Congress in Glasgow, Mark Thompson, president and CEO of The New York Times company, sat down with Tina...

Why launch a micropayment solution when all that publishers seem to want is to have readers committing to a subscription? For Dominic Young, founder of start-up Agate, it's necessary to offer the audience a more flexible relationship.

Famed journalist Hu Shuli told attendees at WAN-IFRA's recent Publish Asia 2019 conference in Singapore they should always preserve and protect their core function of high-quality and hard-hitting journalism, no matter what business challenges they face.

Many publishers struggle with deciding on the correct subscription price for their products as they try to determine what goes into product value and what types of price bundles they should use.

As traditional revenue sources continue to decline and a major share of advertising revenue is claimed by tech giants, more publishers in Europe and the United States are turning to the subscription model, according to new research.

Print media continues to witness slow down, but digital sees steady growth

“Exclusivity is the single largest driver of subscriptions. If you are offering something that no one else has, it’s easier to convince someone to pay you for it,” says Rohin Dharmakumar, co-founder and CEO of The Ken.

In November, the Canadian government announced plans to help provide support to news publishers in the country through a journalism tax credit, a subsidy as well as a tax deduction for digital subscribers. As we wrote at the time, news...

The membership model has "revolutionary" potential for the future of media, says Sebastian Esser, publisher of Krautreporter and co-founder of a membership platform called Steady. The key is passion – the main reason people pay to join membership-based businesses, he says.

The publisher of some of Finland's most successful magazines started changing its culture and transforming digitally well before circumstances dictated those shifts, as Director of Media Business Elina Schüller describes in this interview.

India's Ananda Vikatan has a long and rich history in print, but the publication has also been very active online, and launched a digital subscription model fairly early on, which quickly proved itself successful. 

In the news media business, digital revenue is a tough nut to crack. A panel at the Digital Media India 2019 conference in Mumbai in February discussed the possibility of changing this...

As income from advertising has dwindled, more publishers are increasing their efforts to boost revenues from readers. The past year saw several high-profile publications putting content behind paywalls: Wired, The New Statesman, Vanity Fair, New York magazine...

While introducing a paywall came with an initial massive traffic loss for Austria’s Kleine Zeitung, it has helped the newspaper power the change towards a more digital mindset, and boost brand awareness among users.

“We plan to land on the moon in 2020, and be profitable solely with digital income,” says Gard Steiro, editor-in-chief and CEO of VG. “The easy way to achieve this is to lay off reporters, but we plan to have a newsroom of the same size in 2020 as we do today.”

“Innovation is not an event. It's not a lab. It's not the perfect day once a year. It's something that's happening 365 throughout your organisation and it's a really hard process,” says Niddal Salah-Eldin, Director of Digital Innovation at WELT.

Wijeya Newspapers (WNL) was established in 1979 and is Sri Lanka’s leading newspaper group. With a vision to be the most independent and socially responsible media group in the country, it has the highest annual turnover.

Most publishers thriving in today’s “Digital Subscription Economy” will tell you: the most expensive enemy in this world is churn. That is from Cecilia Campbell, who researched and wrote WAN-IFRA’s just-published report, “Engaged Readers Don’t Churn: Retention Lessons for Digital Subscriptions...

While newspaper paywalls remain relatively rare in Latin America, two papers there have achieved success with paid-content strategies: O Globo in Brazil and Clarín in Argentina.

"One of the most important pieces of our revenue strategy in respect to readers has been our site," says Miki Toliver King, Vice President of Marketing at The Washington Post. "We spend a lot of time focussed on 'What is it we are doing on our site to...

In 2015, the Guardian had lost around 100 million pounds for the year, and despite having a huge readership, its future was looking bleak. Today, the company is rapidly approaching break-even, has broader reach than ever and has increased its endowment to more than 1 billion...

"This is all about looking at users from a business point of view, and what we want them to be," said Gadi Lahav, Head of Product for the FT. "We know people pay for habits. So we want to focus on habits. Habits are the best way to...

Reader engagement is a key metric in measuring brand loyalty. At the FT, the newsroom and commercial teams are united in their appreciation of the power of metrics and the data behind them.  

Only a very few newspapers that focus purely on quality journalism will be able to survive on advertising alone. And let’s face it, your publication probably isn’t one of them. Publishers must develop a substantial revenue stream directly from their readers in order to have a...

Three trends from the World Editors Forum's recent Study Tour visits to top newsrooms in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City.

“We are obsessed with margins,” Andiara Petterle, SVP of Product Development and Operations for RBS, says of the company's determination to pursue only those revenue streams that bring good profit margins.

Between 2012 and 2017, the Spanish news publisher El País recorded 68 percent growth (EBITDA). Those five years marked a period of sweeping change throughout the organisation, from a new newsroom to expanded global operations as well as a significant increase in video.

“A media company can potentially have up to 12-15 revenue streams without moving away from its core,” says Raju Narisetti, Professor of Professional Practice and director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University.

“Increasingly, a...

Building an escape room, launching a direct public offering (DPO) for direct reader investment, and renting a room on Airbnb: all ways newspapers are thinking outside the box to diversify their revenue stream. In this guest post, Mary-Katharine Phillips of Twipe says those ideas all provide...

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