Media Briefing: Publishers use standalone newsletter subscriptions to convert more readers

• Amazon is testing a program to pay publishers for traffic, YouTube hits 1 billion monthly podcast listeners and more.

Standalone newsletter subscriptions help convert more readers

Publishers are using different kinds of standalone newsletter subscriptions to grow revenue and, in some cases, offer lower priced tiers to see if they can convert readers around popular products without the financial commitment to the more expensive full digital subscription.

Bloomberg has moved 30 of its 70 newsletters behind a paywall, and introduced a new paid offering for a bundle of five tech-focused newsletters. It’s the first time the business publication has offered a subscription tier separate from the full subscription to Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg app. 

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has three standalone subscription newsletters that have worked to attract new subscribers to the publisher. Axios added two new membership offerings around its newsletters in the past year and expects to double reader revenue this year. The Ankler has raised the price of its overall subscription, as well as introduced a new newsletter paid product around the creator economy.

New York Magazine, owned by Vox Media, is also pushing subscriber-only pop up newsletters. The publisher plans to have 15 of them go out this year, up from nine last year, according to Business Insider.

Here’s what publishers are testing:

Bloomberg introduces newsletter subscription bundle

Bloomberg put most of its author-driven, deep-dive newsletters behind a paywall at the beginning of December, according to Marissa Zanetti-Crume, Bloomberg Media’s global head of product. Most of its news briefings that are more link-based and focus on headlines remain free.

Bloomberg also launched a bundle subscription to its top tech newsletters, due to tech coverage having high engagement both onsite and in inboxes, Zanetti-Crume said. The bundle costs $11.99 a month. A Bloomberg.com subscription currently costs $34.99 a month.

Since the tier was introduced, Bloomberg has found that 92% of active subscribers are first-time subscribers to the publisher. Forty-three percent of them are international subscribers (similar to Bloomberg’s overall subscriber base). Bloomberg declined to share how many subscribers the tech newsletter bundle has nearly three months in. 

The potential for the new bundle cannibalizing the main Bloomberg subscription is “something that we want to keep an eye on as we learn more in the coming months,” Zanetti-Crume said. 

But so far, early signs don’t show this is an issue, she said. Less than 1% of subscribers to the tech bundle downgraded from the full digital Bloomberg subscription to the tech newsletter bundle, according to the publisher. 

The content and cadence of the newsletters behind the paywall won’t change for now, according to Zanetti-Crume, though Bloomberg is in conversations with the journalists that write them about exploring more ways to engage with their readers, such as through podcasts and live events. And a few – like Lucas Shaw’s Screentime newsletter – remain free to access as Bloomberg further tests this new strategy.

Axios expects to double membership revenue this year

Axios launched a paid membership tier to its newsletters for communications professionals about a year ago, called Communicators Pro, and launched another product modeled after it, called Media Trends, less than a month ago. 

Memberships are growing quickly, according to Axios’ vp of marketing and growth Perrin Lawrence, who said she expects revenue to double this year. Lawrence declined to share how many members the two products have, and how much revenue memberships are expected to bring in this year. That’s in part due to an upgrade to Axios’ paywall coming soon, as well as more to offer this year with the addition of Media Trends and adjusting what benefits members get, based on their feedback – which Axios collects through emails and surveys – she said. 

Lawrence said the goal is a 2% subscriber conversion rate. She declined to share what the conversion rate is now.

An annual subscription to Axios Pro costs $2,499 a year, while a Media Trends subscription costs $495 and Communicators Pro costs  $1,000 a year.

FT newsletter subscriptions bring in first-timers

The Financial Times has three standalone, monthly subscription products, including Inside Politics by Stephen Bush, Unhedged by Rob Armstrong – both launched in February 2023 – and a course called Sort Your Financial Life Out with Claer Barrett, created in January 2024.

Research on FT’s audience found a “desire” for lower-cost and standalone subscription products, Sarah Ebner, FT’s executive editor and head of newsletters, told Digiday in an email. A standard digital subscription to the FT currently costs $319 a year, while Inside Politics costs $5.99 a month, Unhedged costs $9.99 a month and Barrett’s course costs about $24 (£19).

“One of our main goals was to attract new readers who would not otherwise pay for a standard or premium FT.com subscription,” she said. “While some newsletter subscribers do convert to a full FT.com subscription, most do not,” Ebner added, without sharing conversion rates. Ebner declined to share how many paying subscribers the FT has, or how many are signed up to these newsletter products. 

Ebner said she wasn’t worried about cannibalization.

“They’re entirely different value propositions,” she said. “The newsletters are very effective sampling and gateway tools, and have shown to be particularly useful around big news events, such as elections.”

For example, the FT pushed people to Inside Politics around the time of the UK general election last summer, with a target of 5,000 sign-ups. The FT ended up with more than 6,000, she said.

The Ankler spins out its own standalone products

The Ankler has a standalone newsletter subscription produced called Series Business, which launched about a year ago and costs $49 a year for windowed content – the newsletter gets sent to paying subscribers 24 hours before it goes live on Substack. Janice Min, CEO of The Ankler, declined to say how many people pay for the subscription-based version of the newsletter but said that about 7,000 people subscribe to it overall. 

In January, The Ankler – which covers Hollywood and the entertainment business – also debuted a standalone newsletter product called Like & Subscribe to cover the creator economy, costing $129 a year. The Ankler declined to share how many people are signed up to receive Like & Subscribe.

Min said products like Series Business are for people only interested in reading about the TV business and “aren’t ready to spend what the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery can spend” for a subscription to The Ankler, which costs $169.99 a year, after the price was raised by $20 last month, and includes access to Series Business. Like & Subscribe requires a separate subscription.

What we’ve heard

“I think that it’s very dangerous for us to start seeing things like this, because that weakens the position of anybody who did not have a contractual status with them.”

— A publishing exec on seeing rising referral traffic from AI platforms to other publishers’ sites.

Numbers to know

1 million: The subscriber goal the Daily Mail aims to hit by 2029 with its new paywall.

25%: The average daily print circulation drop The Los Angeles Times experienced from September 2023 to September 2024.

7%: The percentage of staff getting cut at NPR.

$1 million: The revenue Oliver Darcy’s newsletter startup Status is expected to bring in by the end of this year.

What’ve covered

How podcasters are tackling the challenge of subscriber churn

• More podcast subscription offerings are hitting annual milestones, meaning more data is coming in, and podcasters can start tracking how many subscribers they’re able to retain year over year as those businesses mature.
• In a subscription’s first year, monthly churn rates should be below 1% per month, or, ideally, even below 0.5%, according to David Stern, founder and CEO at Supporting Cast. A subscription that’s been around for five to 10 years should have a monthly churn below 3%.

Read more about how podcasters are finding ways to mitigate churn here.

Publishers’ attempts to block AI crawlers aren’t stopping traffic coming from those platforms

• Traffic getting sent to publishers’ sites from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity is growing. 
• While that makes sense for the publishers that have signed deals with those companies to receive attribution for their content surfaced on those AI chatbot or search platforms, data shows that referral traffic is growing even to sites that are attempting to block those platforms’ crawlers.

Find out how much referral traffic from AI platforms is going to publishers’ sites here.

Creators find YouTube Shorts revenue is still dwarfed by the ad revenue coming from long-form videos

• Two years after YouTube launched the YouTube Shorts revenue share program, said CPMs were consistently below $0.20, compared to average RPMs of between $3 and $6 for their long-form content. 
• More than 25 percent of channels in the YouTube Partner Program are earning through YouTube Shorts’ revenue share

Read more about how the YouTube Shorts revenue share program is working for creators here.

What we’re reading

Amazon tests program that pays media companies for sending traffic to the platform

Publishers like CNN, Vox Media and Future are part of the pilot program, called Native Commerce Advertising (NCA), which will pay media companies when they send readers to Amazon through product recommendations, Business Insider reported. Pay will vary depend on categories, such as 3% for toys and furniture and up to 20% for Amazon video games.

YouTube hits 1 billion monthly podcast listeners

Youtube now has 1 billion monthly active podcast users, Semafor reported. That puts it ahead of audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Last year, YouTube said people watched more than 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices.

Amazon negotiates licensing deals with publishers for an Alexa upgrade

Amazon is working on licensing deals with publishers for an upcoming upgrade to its AI voice assistant Alexa, according to Business Insider. The deals would mean users of Amazon devices – like the Echo smart speaker – hear content from a publisher when they ask Alexa for information.

Vox Media’s CEO says company is not looking to sell

Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff said the company is not looking for buyers for the company after changes to its business strategy, though the company discussed a potential sale of the business in 2023, Axios reported. Bankoff said the Vox Media podcast network is the company’s fastest-growing business.

Ziff Davis removes DEI language from site

Ziff Davis, which owns IGN, CNET, PCMag, among other publications, removed diversity, equity, and inclusion information from its website, 404 Media reported. HR has informed employees no changes will be made to DEI programs at the company despite the move.