Ben May's Presentation at Mumbrella's Publish Conference

Personalisation and Subscription
Models: How Publishers can be
Smarter

Subscription
Display ads
Native ads
Donations  
(consumer)
Related businesses
Ecommerce
Events
Donations 
(organsiations) 0%
2%
2%
3%
7%
8%
27%
52%
Q: Which of the following digital revenue streams is MOST important for your company in 2019?  
Digital leaders survey 2019, N=163
Main revenue focus for 2019
CodeCompanyAU MumbrellaPublish

New York Times 2018
• 4 Million Subscribers (3.1 digital only)

• 200+ Contries

• $1billion Consumer Revenue.
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
New York Times subscription growth
Source: New York Times

Guardian Media Group chief executive David Pemsel  
The Guardian (media release,1st May 2019)
“The Guardian’s audience has grown substantially with record number
of regular readers and digital trafﬁc. The Guardian had over 1.35bn
page views in March 2019, compared to 790m in April 2016.
GMG is now a more reader-funded, more digital, more international
business.”

Reuters’ Journalism, Media & Technology Trends & Predictions 2019 report
“73% of editors, CEOs and digital leaders interviewed, view
personalisation as critical to future growth.”

Welcome back, John

Basic contextual data
• What device they’re using to view our site
• What time of day they’re visiting our site
• Where they’re located with some accuracy
• We can see (for that session) their trafﬁc behaviour
• What kinds of articles they’re looking at

Simple contextual data examples
• Prioritise content on home page based on location
• Don’t ask user to sign up for newsletter if they just clicked a link from the
newsletter
• Adjust paywall meter based on time of day or device or type of story
• Personalise inﬁnite scroll based on location or site history

The Three Types of Data
1st Party Data2nd Party Data3rd Party Data

Collect behavioural
data on users
Centralise the data
Create segments
with the data
Interested in Tech
Interested in Travel
From Australia
Data Management Platform

Goal: Increase paid subscriptions
• Put exclusive content behind a user registration wall
• Build segment to put on email sequence who:
• Who don’t have a paid subscription
• Have been to 6 pages in the last 6 months with ‘conference-video’ tag
• Clicked play button at least 50% of the time, and watched 50%
• Who don’t live in Sydney or Melbourne
• Include other value adds if we know them

–Network Advertising Initiative
“Behaviourally targeted ads are more than  
twice as valuable and twice as effective as  
non-targeted online ads.”

News Website
Top Melbourne Stories
Politics 
Article
Sports 
Article
Recommended
for you
5 Sports you’ve 
never heard of
Website without personalisation
Gender: Unknown
Interests: Unknown
User
Device: Desktop PC
Location: Melbourne
Sponsored
😶

Personalised with DMP
News Website
Top Melbourne Stories
Finance 
Article
Music Article
Recommended for
you
Why I gave up on  
Wall Street
Emily
Gender: Female
Interests: Finance,
Music, Fashion
History: Viewed 5
articles about ﬁnancial
markets and 3 about
music festivals in past
week
Device: Desktop PC
Location: Melbourne
Sponsored

Personalised vs Chronological EDM
Today’s News!
Finance Article
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit.
Emily
Gender: Female
Interests: Finance,
Music, Fashion
History: Viewed 5
articles about ﬁnancial
markets and 3 about
music festivals in past
week
Device: Desktop PC
Location: Melbourne
Sponsored
Music festivals in Melbourne
adipiscing elit.
Today’s News!
Why I gave up on Wall St.
adipiscing elit.
Sports Article
adipiscing elit.
Sports Article
adipiscing elit.
Sponsored
Sydney art galleries this week
adipiscing elit.
5 Sports you’ve never heard of
adipiscing elit.
Finance Article
adipiscing elit.

⚠ Never make explicit assumptions ⚠

Getting started
• Enhance current users’ experience
• Promote subscriptions (paid or unpaid)
• Learn more about your audience
• Basic is better than nothing
• Respect privacy

if( user_came_from_edm ) { 
dont_promt_for_edm_subscription() 
}

Getting more advanced
• Rolling out a Data Management Platform (DMP)
• Building a single customer view
• Building out meaningful segments
• Whole organisation involved — understand limitations
• Be more than just a newspaper on the internet

CodeCompanyAU
MumbrellaPublish
Ben May
benjmay

• https://www.adweek.com/digital/conde-nast-will-put-all-titles-behind-a-
paywall/
• https://www.networkadvertising.org/pdfs/NAI_Beales_Release.pdf
• https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/journalism-media-and-
technology-trends-and-predictions-2019
• https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2014/today-in-media-history-
compuserve-and-the-ﬁrst-online-newspapers/

Ben May's Presentation at Mumbrella's Publish Conference

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Ben May's Presentation at Mumbrella's Publish Conference