The Economist’s launches new audio and video tier targeting younger subscribers 

The new tier, which rolls out today, is the latest step in The Economist’s strategy to use audio and video as a gateway for younger, more gender-balanced audiences and to deepen engagement with existing subscribers, according to Nada Arnot, The Economist’s evp of marketing. “Our ongoing effort is to expand our audience base into a more gender balanced audience that does skew younger,” she said. “Audio and video journalism is increasingly more important for us.”

The subscription tier will include The Economist Insider, the long-form, subscriber-only video platform that launched last October and produces two video shows a week, featuring in-depth conversations with Economist editors and high-profile guests, as well as policy debates from The Economist’s staff. 

The push to get more reporter-led video from The Economist’s staff is somewhat at odds with The Economist’s editorial style, which is highly collaborative to the point where the newsroom doesn’t publish bylines. Liv Moloney, head of video at The Economist, said the publisher’s video strategy is focused on pulling back the curtain on newsroom conversations and interviews.

“How we do our analysis and how we build things, that will absolutely never change. What we do have is an increasing number of people’s faces appearing on screen, but that collaborative effort that has gone behind all of those things will absolutely remain and is totally true to The Economist,” Moloney said. “You simply cannot do video with a set of anonymous people. That would be absolutely bonkers.” 

The marketing around Economist Insider isn’t just follow this journalist, tune in to watch this reporter here. It’s “step inside our newsroom,” Moloney said.

“Because we’ve not had bylines for so long, we have this enormous super-fan following, who is dying to know more about our journalists who are behind the writing,” she added. “Insider was meant to be this lifting of the veil into how we make our decisions. The debates we have behind our journalism and giving people an insight into how that works… We’re sharing how we work internally more with people, rather than sort of creating core pieces of hosts and core talent that everyone follows individually. Everything is still done as a collective.”

Both Economist Play and Insider put the humans behind its traditionally anonymous journalism on screen at a time when AI-generated news summaries are proliferating. “In a world of AI, what we really want to do is lift that curtain and show we absolutely have incredible world expertise in these things and give you insight into those people, rather than anyone thinking anything could have been written by a non-human,” Moloney said. “That’s what makes us who we are. And we want to show that off, as a sort of proof of life.”

It’s designed to be consumed in The Economist app, but subscribers can access the content onsite as well. 

Economist Play launches in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Canada today, with plans to roll out in other markets next year. Those markets were chosen based on “industry research” that showed those audiences have a higher engagement rate with audio and video content, Arnot said. 

The Economist’s podcast subscription product, Economist Podcast+, will be rolled into Play and existing subscribers will be upgraded to Economist Play with no change in price, according to the company. The publisher has 1.3 million subscribers globally. 

The Economist’s first real foray into video was when it launched its TikTok channel in 2022. It now has 1.4 million followers, and racked up 188 million views in the last year, according to Tubular Labs data. The Economist’s vertical video views increased 130% from 2024 to 2025, per a company spokesperson, who declined to share raw viewership figures. 

This isn’t The Economist’s first lower-priced subscription offering. In 2022, the publisher relaunched its Economist Espresso app, which includes a global news briefing, daily podcast and five briefing-style articles a day. Economist Espresso is meant to attract younger, female subscribers than The Economist’s typical subscriber, with bite-sized news and a price that’s less than half of The Economist’s digital subscription. The Economist declined to share how many people subscribe to Espresso.

The plan is to also expand more of The Economist’s weekly podcasts into videos, based on the success of Economist Insider, Moloney said.

“We are already seeing a significant impact on subscriber engagement and retention [since Economist Insider launched]” she said. Seventy-five percent of subscribers have engaged with Economist Insider, according to the company. That engagement gave The Economist the confidence that there would be an audience for a subscription offering like Economist Play, Arnot said.

While publishers are increasingly treating video as a core subscription product, the evidence underpinning that strategy is thin. There’s limited data showing that specific content types (like video) can directly drive subscription acquisitions, according to Luke Magerko, director of strategy at publisher consulting practice Mather Economics. 

Even so, publishers like The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Bloomberg have started putting premium video behind their paywalls to try to convert high-intent readers into paying subscribers.

As search referrals decline and younger audiences spend more time watching video, these publishers are gating more premium content formats to try to drive people to their own properties – and betting that video can do more than just engagement work.