Thursday 14th September: Increasing digital ARPU, a necessity for news publishers

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As AI advances continue to disrupt the way we work, there are many questions from news and media organisations: What will be the impact of AI on audience expectations? How can we maintain trust in our news content in the AI era?

Reuters sheds light on these questions in an exclusive report: Powering Trusted News with AI: Navigating the present and shaping the future.

The report explores the role of AI in news and journalism and offers practical advice on how AI can help streamline your processes.

Esther highlighted this piece from Mather on the Media Voices community. It shows that median print subscription prices at 400 North American news outlets are three times more than median digital subscription rates. But this piece isn’t just about publishers charging less because digital has lower overheads or following the Netflix standard of $9.99. Print prices have been rising.

Mather says, “Growth in print subscription revenue was realized using strategic pricing processes that minimize churn from price increases… A similar increase in average price is needed for digital products for news publishers to achieve digital sustainability.”

For publishers to bring digital subscription revenues closer to print, they must increase average revenue per digital user while sustaining sufficient subscription volumes to reach ‘sustainable revenue objectives’. Mather recommends strategic pricing strategies that measure price elasticity among audience segments. At the heart of the issue is matching prices with the value provided to and perceived by the reader.

The Media Leader has also been looking at the issue of digital revenues, landing on micropayments as an experiment whose time has come. From monetising drive-by audiences to tackling the issue of subsciber plateaus, one-time payments might just be a way to generate revenue from the 98% of site visitors who will never subscribe to your site. Well, what have you go to lose?

Excellent profile of Noon, "Home of the Queenager", from Jacob Granger at Journalism.co.uk. Founded by former Sunday Times exec Eleanor Mills, the media brand for women of a certain age narrates ‘a renaissance in what older women can do’. Noon is growing mainly through Mills’ own ‘Queenager’ Substack newsletter which has 10,000 free subscribers and just under 1,000 paying subscribers at £6 a month. Walking the walk.

No, this isn’t another trade-press piece about the enduring power of email. It’s been published by Rolling Stone on its Culture Council network. My first thought on reading it was ‘Who the hell goes to Rolling Stone to brush up on their email strategy?’ But, you know, kudos to Penske Media for convincing the author to pay to join their Culture Council. Pay-to-play rocks 🤘.

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