Be welcomed to the GNI Europe Subscriptions Lab Town Hall with a quick overview of the 9-month-old programme
and what today's sessions will cover.
During the GNI Europe Subscriptions Lab, FT Strategies identified the key challenges that news publishers
faced when transforming to the subscription-first businesses, such as lack of internal alignment, basic
understanding of readers, poor experimentation culture, and missing tools.
How to break these barriers and unlock growth? How to clarify the subscription-first vision?
How to empower teams with data? How to learn fast and accelerate the shift to reader revenue?
When compared to other news media markets in the world, where Google News Initiative supported publishers’ transformation, the European news ecosystem is very diverse. For example, consumption habits, trust in news, addressable market sizes and the level of competition differ between regions.
At the same time, the European publishers are uniquely mature, having many years of experience in growing news subscriptions, and they are confident in their journalism, leading to the prevalence of premium paywalls.
What are the unique conditions across European markets? How did publishers adapt to them? What lessons can be learnt from other markets, such as North or Latin America?
France's La Croix, Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza and Germany's Rheinische Post clarified their digital transformation vision
and brought focus to their teams on what truly mattered to move the business forward. How did they get different sides
of the company to agree on shared goals? What or who did pose the biggest challenge? What are the examples of their
North Star goals?
Publishers, such as Dennik N in Slovakia, The Independent in the United Kingdom, and Vestmanlands Läns Tidning in Sweden,
found that potential subscribers are only a fraction of the overall audience. Identifying them and grouping into segments was
key in tailoring the content and subscription triggers. What did they learn about their readers? How did they break the silos
and democratise the data? How did they tailor their approach to different segments?
The Financial Times in the UK, Kurier in Austria, and El Mundo in Spain improved their decision-making by replacing
hunches with evidence from quality-controlled experiments. They brought rigour and transparency to the process,
so the teams could safely explore their boldest ideas and built the shortest path to success. What kind of experiments
did they do? What did they learn? How did they overcome the barriers, such as legacy systems or a fear of failure?
Synthesise today's programming with a final session highlighting the key takeaways.