Today we're looking at the psychology of subscription offers, how the NYT makes advertising work alongside paid-for content, how to explain product in a newsroom, and why older audiences are important.

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Bild’s subscription offer evolution proves business strategies are meant to be challenged — thefix.media

With almost 600,000 digital subscribers today, BILDplus is by far the biggest journalistic paid content offering in Germany. They started selling digital subscriptions with three products and other add-ons for readers. But after testing, they found out that actually, just one product brings more customers and drives more revenue.

This piece doesn't just look at Bild though. It sets out examples of the psychology of pricing, including decoy pricing, where a less attractive version of a product is created in order to boost the sales of a higher-profit item.

It's a fascinating read. One takeaway is clear: experimentation is key when it comes to subscriptions pricing. Even small changes could make a real difference to conversion.

The New York Times' Tom Armstrong on making advertising work in paid-for digital content — www.fipp.com

Balancing ads and subscriptions is a discussion we're seeing come up more frequently, so it's worth seeing how it's done by one of the giants. “If we create a great experience for subscribers that is worth paying for, then ads have to be worthy of that subscription. If we can make those ads compelling, then they perform well. It sets a high bar for the overall advertising experience and our team has the expertise and focus on quality to fully lean into that.”

Teaching product methods in the newsroom — newsproduct.org

The success of news products hinges on each person throughout the organisation having an understanding of the product vision, its impact on the audience and what role they play in the development and implementation of the product. Here, Adriana Lacy offers tips on how to explain product in a newsroom and get stakeholder buy-in.

AARP makes the case for older audiences — www.mediapost.com

AARP Magazine has a circulation of 22.5 million, and has three demographic editions - one for those in their 50's, one for those in their 60's, and the third for those who are 70+. It's no surprise then that they argue strongly for the value of older audiences to marketers. But the stats are worth publishers taking note of. Breathless chasing of young audiences is all very well, but older people have more spending power.

Mediagazer is an up-to-the-minute homepage of breaking trends and commentary for publishers and media owners. They sift through thousands of sites to present the very best picks on a single page.

Go to mediagazer.com or follow them on Twitter @mediagazer.

This week's podcast

Toolkits Co-Founder Jack Marshall on what’s next for subscriptions — voices.media

This week we spoke to Jack Marshall, Co-Founder of Toolkits, a business information and consulting company focused on subscription publishing. We talked about his past life as a media reporter at Digiday and the WSJ, what opportunity he and co-founder Shareen Pathak spotted in the market, and whether he thinks the subscriptions wave has crested.

Buy the Media Voices team a coffee — ko-fi.com

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