Tuesday 31st May: Why The Independent combined two apps into one

May 31, 2022

In this issue, we look at how The Independent has developed an app that supports subscription and ad revenue, a sensitive rebrand, a UK B2B publisher growing its US business and a sad reminder that the war in Ukraine is still raging.

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The Independent’s new app aims to leverage its mixed subscription and advertising model to help the newspaper reach four million registered users by the end of the year. The logic behind the new app supports access for non-subscribers, of which The Independent claims to reach around 100 million worldwide each month.

The paper's two previous apps – Independent Daily Edition and Independent Premium - both gated content for paid subscribers. The new combined app will give ad-supported access to non-paying readers in return for email registration as part of The Independent’s Anonymous to Known first-party data strategy.

Jo Holdaway, chief data and marketing officer at The Independent, told Press Gazette: “We need to make sure that we’ve shored up the ad generation aspect of our business but also diversified commercially to lessen the risk to the business."

This is an excellent excercise in reading the recessionary room. The FT has buried its 'How To Spend It' brand under the super-vague HTSI acronym and they can now claim that the 'S' is as much about the savers as the spaffers spenders. Don't worry though, if you absolutely live for those super-yacht ads, the magazine is still going to remain a 'little hedonistic'. It's just that now there will be a bit more sensitivity for the people that received the 2.1 million food parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust network last year.

So happy to have a story about former colleagues at a Cheshire-based publisher in today's newsletter. Texere Publishing announced record revenues last year, with 13% growth coming from increased demand for digital products and services. Newsletters in particular were up 66% on 2020. With investment in staff and content, the 10-year-old firm has tapped potential in new markets that founder Andy Davies saw were "underserved”. I might need to head over to Knutsford and see what else they're up to.

It's too easy to forget that the war in Ukraine is still raging. But it is and as a stark reminder, French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, who worked for 24-hour news channel BFMTV, was killed while covering an operation to evacuate Ukrainian civilians. It is estimated more than 20 journalists from around the world have been killed reporting this war and we owe it to them to remember that so many sacrifices continue to be made in the fight for truth.

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This week's podcast

This episode we hear from Bhanupriya Rao, Founder of BehanBox, an Indian publication whose mission is to centre voices of women and gender diverse people through evidence and data-driven reporting. We spoke about the inequalities in access to media in India, how BehanBox hopes to make real changes for women and gender diverse people, and why data is so important in their reporting.

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