KEY NUMBERS

20m

Since the first Global Digital Subscription (GDS) Snapshot in 2018, the number of digital-only subscriptions reported had doubled from ten million to nearly 20 million by the autumn of 2019. That number is impressive because in 2018, Deloitte predicted that it wouldn't be until the end of 2020 that there would be 20 million digital-only subscribers to news and magazine media globally. FIPP

52% v. 14%

According to the latest annual Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than half (52%) of the 200 media executives surveyed in 29 countries said subscription and membership would be their main revenue focus in 2019. This compared with 14% for advertising revenue. Reuters Institute

10x

Research firm Piano has found that the average conversion rate of registered users is 10x that of anonymous visitors. Piano, a digital business platform

From 1 to 8

Today, Investor's Business Daily offers eight different products, each designed with a different investor persona in mind and priced accordingly: Leaderboard costs $69.99 per month, while MarketSmith costs upwards of $1,400 per year. Today, subscriptions account for 80% of IBD's revenues, up from 50% in 2015. Digiday

52k to 13k

In mid-2019, The Los Angeles Times reported adding 52,000 new digital subscriptions in the first half of 2019, but netted an increase of only 13,000 due to churn. EditorAndPublisher.com

5%-25%

While there's a certain allure that comes with capturing new customers, keeping customers coming back will continually result in a greater ROI — and it costs 5-25X less to retain a customer. Harvard Business Review

0-25

Tellingly, back in late 2016, The Washington Post had no one dedicated to working on retention. Today, there are 25 people who work on retention in some fashion. Similarly, The New York Times tripled its retention-focused staff between 2015 and 2017.

6%

Publishers with over 6% stop rates have “thriving” digital subscriptions businesses (a stop rate is the percentage of all digital users who are “stopped” by a subscription prompt, a paywall, or a meter limit), according to the Digital PayMeter Playbook from The Shorenstein Center and Lenfest Institute. The 50th percentile of publishers in the study stops only 1.8% of their readership with a paywall or meter. Publishers with sustainable digital businesses report stop rates above 4.2% of their readers. WhatsNewInPublishing