WAN-IFRA, the Google News Initiative and Mather Economics has published the Google News Initiative Latin America Subscriptions Report, a summary of key takeaways, insights and results from the GNI Latin America Subscriptions Lab.
The cohort featured a diverse group of news businesses, including digital startups and established national news organizations. The Lab was an 18-month, cohort-based effort to bring digital subscriptions best practices and approaches used by publishers around the world to eight Latin American news organizations: Nexo Jornal (BR), Reforma (MX), Estadao (BR), El Espectador (CO), Fohla de Sao Paolo (BR), Estado de Minas (BR), Clarin (AR), and LA NACION (AR).
From elections and civil and social unrest to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Latin American news industry went through a defining period over the last couple of years. The report documents main learnings during this defining period for the region’s news industry and puts together a set of recommendations from successful digital subscriptions models around the world.
“Reader revenue — and digital subscriptions, in particular — can be a part of the long-term solution for sustainability across the news industry. But it’s still an emerging discipline, particularly in Latin America, and there’s still a lot to learn for all of us. Over the past two years, the Latin America Subscriptions Lab has produced so many sharp insights on factors that can help news organizations be successful. I’m thrilled that we’ll be able to share those learnings more broadly through this report and hopeful it’ll help make the subscriptions journey a little easier for news organizations across the world,” said Arun Venkataraman, co-lead of the Digital Growth Program at the Google News Initiative.
By making the recommended changes to their digital subscription practices, the participating companies collectively generated nearly $7.2 million in incremental subscription revenue — equating to $30 million 5-year lifetime value forecast — over the Lab’s 18 months. The A/B tests recommended by the Mather team collectively generated $1.9 million, equating to ~$10 million in 5-year lifetime value from new subscriber starts and retention savings.
“We are grateful for the participation of the LATAM news publishers in the GNI Subscription Lab. Together we learned a tremendous amount about developing a sustainable digital subscription revenue business. The insights from this Subs Lab are relevant to news publishers everywhere in the world and at different stages of digital transformation, and we are excited to share the findings in this report,” said Matt Lindsay, president of Mather Economics.
The GNI LATAM Subscriptions Lab generated the following takeaways, with implications for publishers everywhere:
The free report is available for download here.
The webinar discussion about the report and its main takeaways can be watched on demand here.