Innovations in building audience revenues to inspire your strategies

Published: 08 Oct 2021

The pandemic accelerated many trends that we were already seeing, and the rapid growth in subscriptions in the past eighteen months has underlined the importance of reader revenues for your publishing brand to grow successfully. In times of crisis, people turned to trusted publishers and quality journalism for the latest news and for entertainment during long months of lockdown. And there’s been no sign of this trend slowing.

So for the third day of the AOP Publishing Tech Talk, we’re exploring how you can diversify and build your reader revenues. And to kick off the day’s discussion, we reached out to our Associates to find out which innovations in reader revenue strategies they most admired…

Tortoise Media: Developing an all-encompassing membership model

One of the key drivers of a subscription business is customer loyalty. If you build deeper long-term relationships with your prospects and customers, they are more likely to convert and less likely to churn. Some publishers are shifting away from pure subscription models to more all-encompassing membership models.

In the U.K., Tortoise Media has been at the forefront of this concept. Membership not only involves access to their premium online journalism, but also includes podcasts, a quarterly book, personalised stationery, newsletters and access to live events. Members get complimentary tickets to these events that they call "ThinkIns." Importantly, they try to run these interactive events across the U.K. in an attempt to avoid being too London-centric and engage with a broader audience.

Consequently, members feel a greater affinity to the brand and have many more touch points throughout the relationship.

Rupert Knowles, U.K. General Manager, Piano

Capital.fr & Les Echos: Becoming an authority in an area of interest

I specifically admire two initiatives that I have witnessed in my home-country in France:

• Capital.fr’s (owned by Prisma Media) initiative to launch “21millions,” a paid subscription-based newsletter about Cryptocurrency markets, which quickly became a reference on this topic. I am impressed that such a well-known and traditional publisher like Prisma Media was able to launch a paid-for newsletter on this advanced topic.

• As a huge consumer of audio content, I strongly believe that native podcasts are a natural extension of the high value content built by traditional print publishers. The publishing group Les Echos has created two daily podcasts - Code Source and La Story - that allow them to reinforce their brand image beyond the limitations of print.

Fabien Magalon, Chief Supply Officer, Ogury

The Ozone Project: Putting transparency at the core

The Ozone Project has created an open marketplace for UK premium news media, with scale in this market that is comparable to Facebook. With transparency at its core, Ozone gives brands the security that their entire digital spend goes to trusted and known publishers.

Anne Claire Chenu, Director Tech Sales, Xandr

The Washington Post: Being proactive with your audience

I really like the Washington Post spin-off example with Arc Publishing from a tech perspective. Publishers that are focused on average revenue per unit [ARPU] and take decisions on how to acquire users (paid and organic) are also very inspiring. They are proactive on their audiences

Guillaume Polaert – Co-founder, Pubstack

BONUS INNOVATION: Putting e-commerce and affiliate sales front and centre

An exciting area of revenue generation for publishers which has been increasingly growing in recent years is e-commerce. With a valuable direct to consumer relationship, publishers have the opportunity to really capitalise further in this area. E-commerce and affiliate sales will become an increasingly important part of revenue diversification for publishers, particularly in a world where walled gardens continue to attract the lion's share of digital ad investment.

Ryan Afshar, Head of Publishers, UK, LiveRamp

All this week, the AOP Publishing Tech Talk is giving publishers the information download they need to grow their businesses through the creative and effective application of tech solutions.

On day three, we’ll be focussing on reader revenues – on which successful growth for most publishers depends. Here’s everything you can catch today:

• - Catch Ogury’s showcase to understand how you can build the most effective monetisation strategy with the Ogury Publisher Suite. TUNE IN TO THIS THREE MINUTE GUIDE FROM 10AM TO LEARN MORE.
• - How can you build an optimised mix of reader revenue strategies? Our Managing Director, Richard Reeves, joins Future’s Nick Flood where they’ll be sharing lessons from building tech solutions to drive reader revenues – and what Nick’s focussing on next. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FROM 11AM.
• - Join Google, our premium sponsor for the day, along with representatives from Deloitte, The Telegraph, FT Strategies, and Independent News & Media, as they explore findings findings from Deloitte’s study of major publishers and broadcasters who are thriving in a privacy-centric digital ecosystem. REGISTER HERE TO JOIN THE WEBINAR FROM 2-3PM.