Digital Media Europe doubles down on in-person attendance and reader revenue deep dive

After two years of meeting virtually, the flagship event will take place on the 1^st and 2^nd June at the headquarters of Schibsted Media Group in Oslo, Norway. Attending publishers will have the opportunity to hear how some of the most cutting-edge news companies – national, regional and local publishers – are growing their reader revenue business. And, for a change, have a chance to network and engage with not only the speakers but other like-minded attendees.

This year’s programme addresses some of the key issues publishers are tackling with their consumer-driven business: growth, retention, business models, onboarding, customer experience, making audio a part of the mix, and more. Here are just some of the publishers speaking at the event:

Katja Fleischmann, Head of Performing Content at dpa infocom in Germany, will share how the German news agency and the consulting firm Schickler launched the DRIVE project in 2020 in partnership with some 20 German newspaper groups (local and regional press). This collaboration focuses on digital subscriptions and joint experimentation to enable publishers to learn from each other about their users’ behaviour and expectations, and how to encourage them to subscribe or stay subscribed. The initiative has produced a wealth of data and analyses, as participating publishers have access to some 120 dashboards, enabling them to benchmark their performance against the entire group or individual partners. That is just one benefit of the cooperation.

Richard Furness, Managing Director of Consumer Revenues & Publishing of Guardian News & Media in the UK, will share the numerous ways the iconic publisher is benefitting and evolving its consumer revenue business. At the end of November 2021, the Guardian reported a total of 1,000,035 digital subscriptions, comprising 419,541 digital subscriptions and 580,494 recurring contributions from supporters in 180 countries around the world.

Anne Tostain, Vice President of Subscriptions at Le Monde in Paris, will talk about some of the key actions the iconic French publisher has taken to fuel growth in subscriptions. According to Press Gazette, Le Monde has more than 520,000 paying subscribers across print and digital, having doubled its subscriber base since 2017, when its digital subscribers surpassed print for the first time. Some 420,000 of subscribers are digital-only, with a growth rate of about 20% per year. Digital makes up 30% of the newspaper’s revenues.

Danuta Breguła, Executive Board Member, Director of Membership Strategy at newonce in Poland, helped to build up Gazeta Wyborcza’s digital subscriptions (240,000) over the past years and left the Polish leading daily last year to join newcomer newonce, which focuses on urban culture. For this move, she chose a membership strategy, and perhaps for a good reason: newonce’s Gen Z audience.

Sidney Glastad, Lead Growth and Target Groups of Schibsted in Norway, will talk about how Aftenposten is honing its retention strategy. With 80% of Aftenposten’s revenues coming from subscriptions, with 140,000 digital-only subscriptions, the leading national quality daily depends on an ever-evolving growth AND retention strategy. A big part of that includes the type of content that users consume the closer they get to their paywall..

Also from Schibsted, Therese Grieves, CX Lead in Norway, will share how the media group is experimenting with compelling and effective onboarding strategies, what tests and analyses they are running to create habits and what they are doing to reduce churn.

The actual programme will kick off with this twist from one of the leading digital subscription pioneers in Scandanavia: Amedia. This is direct from the programme: “On the night of Tuesday 28 December 2021, Amedia, one of Norway’s largest media companies, was hit by a “severe” cyber attack and was forced to shut down its IT systems. What happened next is the story Pål Nedregotten will tell us.”

The event is followed by a one-day (sold-out) Study Tour in Oslo, where attendees will visit the numerous premium publishers in Norway’s capital.

For more details on Digital Media Europe, go here.