When it comes to innovation and digitalisation, Scandinavia has long been an early mover, often setting benchmarks in how media organisations embrace change.

While many countries have since closed the gap, the region’s publishers continue to stand out for their ability to blend journalistic quality with forward-thinking technology.

This has also been the case in the realm of financial journalism. Media brands like Dagens Næringsliv in Norway, Privata Affärer in Sweden, Kauppalehti in Finland, and Dagbladet Børsen in Denmark — among others — consistently explore new tools and formats to deliver the next generation of financial news to both young and more senior readers.

In this article, we examine how Denmark’s Børsen has modernised its financial coverage, grown its readership, and strengthened its digital business model through thoughtful transformation.

How to optimise legacy brands for a digital future

Founded in 1896, Børsen has long been a trusted source of business news for professionals, investors, and decision-makers in Denmark.

Like many legacy media companies, the newspaper faced the challenges of shifting reader habits and declining print revenues. Recognising the need to future-proof its business, Børsen moved toward a digital-first model in 2018, anchored by a three-pillar strategy designed to diversify its offering and grow online revenue:

1. Børsen Pro Finans, a specialised digital edition offering daily financial news and analysis, targeted at professionals in the financial world.
2. Børsen Atelier, a weekly digital magazine dedicated to art, offering insights into auctions, galleries, and private collections.
3. Børsen Investor, a digital platform offering live data, investor tools, and editorial insights aimed at private investors.

Børsen identified a gap: Private investors lacked a single destination where they could combine quality news with intuitive financial tools. Børsen Investor was built to fill that void.

Enter investor mode: unifying data and content

To bring Børsen Investor to life, the publisher partnered with leading tech providers to build a platform that integrated real-time financial data with context-rich editorial content, all delivered in a responsive and mobile-friendly design.

The platform would deliver:

• Live data coverage of Danish and global stocks, indices, and markets.
• Editorial integration, allowing news, articles, and videos to appear alongside relevant market data.
• Smart tagging and personalisation, showing users content tailored to specific companies or sectors.
• High performance and mobile responsiveness, built for traffic spikes and modern reader behaviour.

The result was a scalable, user-centric experience, offering investors a one-stop destination to track the markets and understand the stories behind the numbers.

The results: more engagement, higher revenue

The impact of Børsen Investor was both immediate and significant. Compared to its previous solution, the platform delivered:

• +74% increase in monthly pageviews.
• +125% boost in average time spent on site.
• +75% more pageviews per visit.
• +50% growth in advertising revenue.

By seamlessly connecting editorial content with investor tools, Børsen not only enhanced user experience but also created a product that supported multiple revenue streams: advertising, registration, and subscription.

“With our partner, Norkon, we were able to create a state-of-the-art market universe which our customers are really excited about and that generates much higher engagement than our previous market pages,” noted the team at Dagbladet Børsen.

From curiosity to conversion: a tiered approach

One of the platform’s greatest strengths is its tiered user journey, designed to encourage deeper engagement over time:

• Free access means that most features are available without registration, helping to drive discovery and reduce entry barriers.
• Free accounts for registered users, where they can personalise their experience with favourites, alerts, and portfolios, creating habits and increasing return visits.
• Paid subscriptions offer advanced features like real-time pricing and premium alerts for subscribers. This also includes access to exclusive editorial content.

This clear progression from casual reader to registered user to subscriber created a sustainable growth funnel, helping Børsen convert engagement into revenue without disrupting the user experience.

Creating value for advertisers

Børsen Investor didn’t just benefit readers. With increased traffic and a well-defined, financially engaged audience, the platform also became a space for advertisers.

Whether targeting professionals, retail investors, or readers planning for retirement, advertisers found value in appearing on a platform that combined credibility with commercial reach.

As Børsen continued to refine its advertising partnerships, the Investor platform became a key pillar in Børsen’s ad revenue strategy. “Commercially, we have generated new advertising partnerships, which increased our advertising revenue by over 50 percent,” noted the Dagbladet Børsen team.

What other publishers can learn

The Børsen story holds valuable lessons for other newsrooms undergoing digital transformation. At its core, this success was about identifying a gap in the market, and aligning product development and smart technologies with audience needs.

Key takeaways include:

• Break down silos: Analysing the different reader personas and identifying their interests and needs led Børsen to build their three-pillar strategy in 2018.
• Find suitable and smart solutions: Partnering with a specialised financial market data platform like Pulse enabled the integration of editorial content with data and investor tools.
• Design for conversion: A thoughtful user journey from free access to subscription helped Børsen build long-term sustainability.

Conclusion

Børsen’s digital reinvention is a great example of how legacy media can evolve without compromising editorial quality. By aligning strategy, technology, and reader experience, the publisher built a platform that meets the expectations of modern news consumers while setting a new benchmark for financial journalism in the process.

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