For many publications, including Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (F.A.Z.), subscriptions are increasingly important to maintaining a healthy bottom line. Known for its in-depth coverage, the German-language daily reaches 148 countries and 17.3 million readers each month. F.A.Z. operates what's known as a freemium paywall. Some articles are free, while others can only be accessed with a paid subscription. Those subscriptions generate crucial revenue, so to continue producing quality news, F.A.Z. needs its paywall to convert as many readers as possible into subscribers.

According to Nico Wilfer, Chief Product Officer at F.A.Z., subscriptions are highly important due to their business goal to achieve 300,000 sustainable digital subscribers by 2025. Together with the Google News Initiative, F.A.Z were able to realize some of its innovative project ideas, and thereby got closer to reaching the goal.

F.A.Z. established an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven solution for one of their most critical areas of their business: subscriptions. The tool, developed with the support of the Google News Initiative, delivers their editors predictions on which articles will work best behind the paywall.

Previously, F.A.Z. approached this challenge retrospectively, looking at past records and figuring out through trial and error what articles might work based on experience. The new AI tool relies on different data sources such as the conversions of all previous paid articles, including some metadata like author, department and date of publishing. By using Google's machine learning technology to analyze their paywall content, results to date show that almost half of all predictions are nearly 100% accurate, which means that the AI tool is very effective at predicting future article conversions. 

Wilfer says that many editors are very interested in an AI service that supports their daily work, and are learning how to make the most of the tool. But, he adds, every publisher has to find their own approach. No one has one solution to improve subscription conversion rates across the board. The rate depends on conditions that vary, such as subscription model, traffic sources and to which degree AI is used in the process.

Growing a subscription business is critical for news publishers. However, the subscription landscape is complex. There are a variety of different subscription offerings and models available, and AI and ML can be a powerful addition to the newsroom to optimize and improve these — and to provide a unique experience for both publishers and their readers. Read the full case study to find out more.

Since the Google News Initiative was created in 2018, we have strived to meet publishers wherever they are in their digital evolution. We’ve worked with thousands of publishers on specific business challenges, like digital subscriptions and advertising revenue, and provided tools like News Consumer Insights to help publishers grow their online audiences. In 2020, we launched the GNI Digital Growth Program, a free initiative aimed at empowering small and mid-sized global news publishers to grow their businesses online. 

We’ve learned over the years that the shift to digital doesn’t happen overnight, so we shaped the Digital Growth Program to provide multiple entry points to support publishers' digital transformation, wherever they may be in the process. This includes live workshops and expert panels where participants can learn from various subject-matter experts and ask questions, interactive exercises that provide personalized recommendations, playbooks that dive deep into business topics relevant to news organizations, and collaborative Labs that tackle specific business problems with like-minded participants and experts. 

To date, more than 8,600 participants from more than 130 countries have been trained through the Digital Growth Program, across topics like reader revenue and audience development. This spans live and on-demand sessions in English, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, German, Polish, Italian and Czech. 

We’re continuing to expand the program to new topics and regions, including on June 1, launching the advertising revenue workshops and playbook(register here).  To date, the program has resulted in publishers all over the world showing measurable growth in their digital businesses. 

La Prensa in Panama took part in our Subscriptions Lab and increased digital subscribers fivefold. A core pillar of their strategy was to make their subscription product more accurately reflect their brand, ultimately moving business-related content behind their paywall to increase revenue. The publisher’s participation in the Lab gave them more confidence to make strategic decisions based on sound analysis and effective tools. 

The Telegraph Herald in the United States ran a number of experiments as part of our Subscriptions Lab, including launching targeted email pushes, implementing a new pricing model and testing higher rates. As a result of the Lab, they experienced a 25% increase in digital subscriptions, a 28% increase in newsletter subscribers and a 19% increase in subscriptions conversion rate. The Telegraph Herald gained a newfound confidence and ability to advance experimentation and revenue growth as a result of their participation.

The Vermont Digger leveraged the GNI Sponsorships Lab to understand the power of virtual events. The Digger team ran a lively, three month virtual event series that successfully brought in one large sponsor to support the full series. As a result of their participation in the Lab, Vermont Digger grew their annual sponsorships revenue by 71% and increased average client revenue by 61%. They did all of that despite the impact and stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attending the GNI Digital Growth Program workshops helped Italian publishersIVG.it and Genova24.it refine their offering to readers and increase the number of paying members. Through participation in the same program, La Cronica in Spain was able to better analyze reader engagement and grow revenue. 

Business Insider Japan, a participant in the GNI Subscriptions Lab in Asia Pacific, aligned its organization’s thinking around digital subscriptions, using new benchmarks and key metrics that the business had not previously considered.  Due to the program, the organization was able to grow digital subscription revenue and month-end digital subscribers by nearly 25% each. 

In the past two weeks, we have kicked off newAudience Development Labs in North America and South America in partnership with INMA and News Revenue Hub, with another set to launch in Asia in July 2021. And in Europe, we will be launching new programs throughout the year in partnership with FT Strategies.

Editor’s note: The Google News Initiative is supporting diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships at three of the industry’s top executive education programs: the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University, the Media Transformation Challenge at Poynter Institute and the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at CUNY. This post is authored by the director of the Sulzberger Program, Corey Ford. 

Representation at the highest levels of leadership in journalism is essential to an equitable, well-functioning democracy that truly reflects the lived experiences of all people. Right now, the journalism industry is falling well short of having the right diversity of perspectives in the room at the leadership level to properly make the strategic, editorial, product and budgetary decisions to ensure that our collective stories are being properly told. This must change.

As an executive education program that trains senior leaders of respected news organizations, the Columbia Sulzberger Program has a responsibility to help those organizations deepen their bench of leaders from underrepresented backgrounds. Besides encouraging news organizations to sponsor and nominate leaders from underrepresented backgrounds, we think it is important to provide both a path for underestimated leaders to apply to the Sulzberger program directly and a way to fund their tuition and travel to attend. Thanks to the support of the Google News Initiative, that path is now open.  

Today I am announcing that Google News Initiative will be sponsoring four scholarships, including tuition and travel, for leaders from groups typically underrepresented in journalism to attend the upcoming 2021 Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia Journalism School. 

The Columbia Sulzberger program trains news leaders to innovate and solve strategic business challenges in a time of rapid transformation, uncertainty and opportunity. Fellows use the 21-week program to launch, accelerate and implement a real-world project that is critical to the mission of their organizations and integrated into their day-to-day work. The program will begin with a two-week residency on the campus of Columbia Journalism School in New York City from August 2-13, 2021 and conclude with one final week of residency, January 3-7, 2022, with weekly virtual cohort sessions in between.  

Any leader in journalism across the world who self-identifies as being from a group typically underrepresented in journalism is eligible to apply for a GNI scholarship. All tuition and travel costs for three weeks in New York City will be covered. Applications are open right now through a simple form (no letters of recommendation required) and are due no later than June 10.  Final decisions will be made by June 21.  All applicants for the GNI Scholarship will also be given a one-on-one interview with me, the Director of Columbia Sulzberger Program.

Ready to apply, or know someone who should be a fellow?  Read more about the program on my blog and on the Columbia Journalism School website, join me for a virtual information session on Wednesday May 26 at noon ET and start your application today.

News 12 Networks, a division of Altice USA, was looking to curate content for a younger audience to grow our brand and reach without adding more work for our digital production team. We wanted to build a content vertical using our existing staff and resources, and figured the best way to do this was to use high-quality, evergreen content the network had already produced — entertainment stories, lists, local guides and lifestyle content. The key would be to surface it in a new and unique way and automate the process. Enter the Google News Initiative.

Without getting too technical, we pitched the GNI on a machine learning project, which means code would be written to distinguish specific categories of news from our existing content and display videos from those categories anywhere we chose. We produce roughly 100 stories and videos per day across our tri-state region, and more than one third of the content is surfaced through the machine learning tool.

News 12 Spark is a curated site, completely automated and powered by the ML solution we built, that offers video content for younger audiences  from around the network’s seven regions in the Tri-State Area of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. You can find News 12 reporting on stories like the need for more bike lanes in New York City and how local sports arenas will welcome back fans. 

As part of the process, we put together a how-to playbook that defines our objectives, shares our outcomes so far and lays out a plan for other media companies to learn from our project, including these helpful learning areas:

• Phases and approach:We broke everything down into three phases so the project was not a burden on existing resources. This helped ease everything from brainstorming to development to total execution. 

• Solutions maps:For the technical folks, these maps give a behind-the-scenes look on how the content categories are mapped with video tags and how they flow from the custom back-end content management system to the front end on the new vertical.

• Findings and future:We talk about how we came up with the idea and things we learned during and after it was built. We initially only thought about attracting a younger audience, but the possibilities are endless for content verticals because we produce so  much content that it can all be automated to various new sites. We could spin up a site about pets, local sports teams or food destinations. 

While the News 12 Spark site is only a proof of concept for the Altice project team, we will be looking for opportunities to use what we’ve developed and learned across our other media properties. 

We are still in the early stages of measuring this effort’s success, but we’ll be paying attention to  how the tool we built helps attract new audiences, bring in additional revenue, increase video views and, ultimately, how it applies to other parts of our news business. In the future, we hope to identify new verticals and deliver content to them through this GNI-supported solution. This partnership has allowed us to innovate in the most efficient way and we look forward to sharing more results soon.