Month: September 2021

The esports organization 100 Thieves, for example, essentially doubles as a streetwear company; its exclusive and time-limited merchandise “drops” often sell out within hours. This rarity commands premium prices: 100 Thieves hoodies currently go for $135 on the organization’s official store, with high-end collabs such as the recently announced 100 Thieves x Gucci backpack carrying an even higher $2,500 price tag. “There’s a lot of exclusivity within the esports space around merch — you know, exclusive drops. That kind of scarcity drives the prices up,” said Caroline Beall, Immortals’ director of partnership operations. “And that’s a good strategy, people definitely like that approach. I just think that on the opposite end of that spectrum, it’s obviously not accessible.”

This loss-leader strategy — that is, the sale of popular items at non-profitable prices to attract new customers — is a tried-and-true business move in other industries, such as fashion, technology and even the traditional gaming industry, where consoles are often considered loss-leaders. However, it is exceedingly uncommon in esports, where many companies are still trying to forge a path to probability. Immortals’ merchandising business was and is profitable, but Sherman made it clear that his company is not taking a literal loss on its zero-profit experiment: “it’s just flat,” he said.

A $17 T-shirt or hat might not seem like the determining factor behind an esports fan’s choice of team, but Romer’s time in the merchandising trenches of both esports and traditional sports has taught him that the average fan is relatively fickle, at least at the outset. “People laugh when I say that people have picked teams based on the first piece of merchandise they bought,” Romer said, “or based on the color — because they like the color, they buy the merchandise, and suddenly they start following the team.”

Immortals is in a position to take this gamble because each of the disparate business units that make up Immortals is currently cash-flow positive. “We’re making money in every single one of our teams, so we have this chance right now to actually invest and expand,” Sherman said. “At the same time, we need to kind of retell our brand narrative as more of a development angle, and really a comeback story.”

The strategy meshes well with other aspects of Immortals that highlight the team’s long-term outlook, such as its focus on developing and training its competitors in-house. Though the zero-profit-pricing strategy will almost certainly decrease Immortals’ revenues in the short term — profit margins for its merchandise previously hovered between 25% and 40%, according to Sherman, who declined to provide specific dollar amounts — its front office is confident that the strategy will draw in younger and more casual fans to expand its fan base and help the team generate higher profits driven by more active revenue streams such as sponsorships and media rights in the long run. “The fact that we’re willing to develop players and find people who are worth investing in and growing with is in line with that brand strategy,” Beall said. 

A veteran of the sports and esports merchandising industry, Romer works with some of the most well-known esports organizations in addition to his work with Immortals, including Astralis, G2 and Complexity Gaming. But he’s never seen anything quite like Immortals’ zero-profit strategy. “It’s unusual for an organization to say, ‘you know what, we’re not going to take any profit; we want it to be the most price-competitive that makes sense without causing issues for either the Immortals brand or the We Are Nations brand,’” Romer said.

“And we spent a lot of time looking at all of that. So, overall, it’s different. And if it hits its objective to pull fans in through merchandise, then it’s brilliant — it’s a masterstroke.”

In the third quarter of 2021, Digiday polled agencies and brand professionals about several different topics, including which widely used advertising channels drive marketing success, with the focus principally on digital platforms. 

Digiday broke out the results among 70 respondents who work at independent agencies, defined as those not owned by holding companies.

The data quantifies something that has been widely understood in digital media for a while: That Facebook and Google dominate the digital ads space.

62% of respondents said Google accounts for at least a “large portion” of the ad spending they do for clients, with about a third of that total saying Google accounted for a “very large” portion; another 14% of respondents said the same (at least “large”) about YouTube. Similarly, 50% of respondents said Facebook accounted for at least a “large portion” of client ad spending, and another 46% said the same about Instagram.

Yet the defining feature among the platforms was just how few respondents were confident that any given channel drove results. Digiday asked survey respondents to rate their confidence in a list of channels using a five-point scale, ranging from “Not at all confident” to “Extremely confident.”

Google easily led the pack in this regard, with 68% of respondents that spent on Google saying that they were either “confident” or “extremely confident” it drove marking success. Instagram and Facebook followed, with 57% and 53% respectively. 

Amazon is also in the mix, despite the fact that close to half of the survey’s respondents said they do not spend client budgets on Amazon. In fact, a higher percentage of respondents said they were “confident” in Amazon — 43% — than any other option listed. Notably, smaller percentages said they were “very confident” in Amazon which may reflect why Amazon comprised a “large” portion of ad spending for a relatively small share of respondents.

Every other option shown to respondents scored lower than 50%.

Indeed, one of the most striking features of the survey is just how many respondents said they were not at all confident in the channels they were advertising in. For a number of channels, including TikTok, television and publisher display ads, the percentage of respondents using a given channel that said they were “not at all confident” a channel was driving marketing success was as big or bigger than the percentage that said they were “extremely confident” it was driving success. 

“Marketers are getting organized on preparing for targeting without third-party cookies and the most scalable thing they can test currently are audiences curated by publishers,” said Chris Kane, founder of programmatic consultancy Jounce Media.

So much so that for one European publisher this shift is influencing how it makes money, moving euros away from programmatic auctions and into direct sales.

“Before the pandemic, we were heading towards 70% share of programmatic sales but this year we’re only at 60% where good old-fashioned insertion orders are bringing in more revenue,” said the publisher’s commercial lead on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to talk to Digiday.

Insertion orders are handed by advertisers to publishers to ensure ads are placed on a site. That these deals, which predate programmatic, are back en vogue is good for publishers because the deals aren’t contingent on an intermediary and therefore the media dollars go directly to them. As the exec explained: “Even though agencies don’t really like IOs they seem to acknowledge that due to [Apple’s Intelligent Tracking] ITP and privacy-related limitations IO in some cases actually do their job and outperform programmatic strategies.”

Maybe this time, though, the appetite to get these direct deals done makes them more prevalent. After all, publishers have a habit of playing this card anytime media dollars going into Google and Facebook are in the spotlight. It happened in the run-up to the General Data Protection regulation and before that during the brand safety crisis. And yet as successful as these moves have been for some premium publishers, for many others they’ve flattered to deceive. Nevertheless, publishers are loath to let a good crisis go to waste and, like clockwork, are wheeling out a familiar pitch as the search for alternatives to third-party cookies sputters along.

Understandably, advertisers are all ears. They need to know where they can find data that fills the growing gap left by fewer third-party cookies in circulation. Premium publishers are one of a few sources. And the audience segments they own can then be made accessible to advertisers in the form of either new bid request signals provided by the publisher or more simply through a bid request deal ID. Put another way: premium publishers are telling advertisers they can access their data more effectively if they buy media from them versus through other ad tech vendors. Some advertisers are putting those claims to the test. 

“We expect high increases in volumes and price inflation on the private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals with publishers directly, especially among the larger advertisers,” said Ruben Schreurs, group chief product officer at media investment analysis specialist Ebiquity.

It goes to show how amorphous the idea of these direct deals is. For the anonymous publisher, it’s more about the hands-on process of brokering deals directly with advertisers. For Ebiquity’s clients, it’s more about the automated, programmatic side of media like programmatic guaranteed and private marketplaces — especially now that there are more advertisers capable of facilitating these types of deals.

Usually, those programmatic deals revolve around a straightforward premise: publishers use first-party cookie data to build profiles on their site visitors who are then packaged up into audiences via data management tech either they own or from a company like Permutive before those audiences are touted to different advertisers using a deal ID. 

Nestle, for one, has been meeting with publishers to discuss brokering these types of deals at a global level.

As has luxury brand Montblanc. Its global head of media and advertising Maria von Scheel-Plesse said as much at the Programmatic Pioneers summit in May where she stressed that direct partnerships with Montblanc’s top partnerships are a priority. This could be through a private marketplace, a direct data-sharing relationship, or a fusion of the two.

In fact, some of OMD’s clients are pursuing the latter. 

“We’re currently setting up and piloting private data marketplaces,” said Miles Pritchard, managing partner of data management solutions at OMD EMEA, who declined to name exact clients. “These use deals IDs and direct-SSP integrations to support audience targeting across the individual publishers, networks, and the open web.”

So while these deals aren’t as direct as they might sound given there are still agencies and ad tech vendors doing much of the heavy lifting for both advertisers and publishers, there’s less friction between those two points than maybe there has been in the past. For example, demand-side platforms like Centro are building tools to help marketers understand the fair market value of inventory before they sign up for a deal ID. On the other side of the supply chain, supply-side platforms like Xandr are working with sets of publishers to package their inventory into a single deal ID that will only work across inventory on those sites — a curated marketplace.

A volume game

It sounds great in theory for all parties concerned: advertisers get to reach high-value audiences based on rich data sourced from publishers: publishers get more money as a result of there being fewer hands in the cookie jar. The reality, however, is a lot less straightforward.

Take the publisher that’s enjoying a bump in insertion orders. It also feeds its own first-party data into private marketplace deals in the hope that advertisers will pony up. In some ways, it has worked as its share of budgets has gone up off the back of the move, but in other ways, it hasn’t as CPMs didn’t rise.

The key takeaway is that if the publisher can be better than its competitors in generating value for advertisers then they place a larger share of their budgets in those impressions. So for this publisher, it’s a volume game rather than a pricing game.

Little wonder then why many publishers are taking a more pragmatic stance on these types of deals as evidenced by the breadth of tests currently in play.

Some like News UK is pitching its own data platform so an advertiser can work directly with the publisher’s data in a privacy-centric way. Advertisers can model data sets from their existing target segments or modify based on News UK’s proprietary preference, opinion and emotion signals. On the other hand, Axel Springer is working with ad tech vendor Xandr to allow advertisers to set up programmatic guaranteed deals across its inventory. Furthermore, Future is using its new audience data platform to generate richer segmented data sets for impressions advertisers to buy via insertion orders, programmatic guaranteed or private marketplace-style deals. 

“We monitor what advertisers are spending across our properties and are talking to them to try and move those budgets into PMP deals so that they can start to get better at targeting across different environments with high-impact solutions that they can’t get on the open market,” said Nick Flood, global commercial operations director at Future. “And of course, we can charge higher yields and have better relationships as a result of these deals.”

Sure, there’s less urgency for these deals now that Google has given those cookies a stay of reprieve in its browser, but they are already unavailable across a large part of the web. Also, there’s the cost of one-to-one marketing to consider.

The thick shell that has to be put around data amid intensifying regulations and privacy concerns is changing the economics of media buying. It’s not just a cost-of-sales issue now so much as it is a broader reframing of media sales, supporting technology, and data across the board, said Cory Munchbach, chief operating officer at customer data platform BlueConic.

“Yes, costs will likely go up (especially at the beginning of this journey) but so too should the performance of the media as well as consumer trust, better brand image, and reduced risk for being incompliant,” said Munchbach. These are not going to be captured in the advertiser’s budget or media plan but they are very real line items in the overall equation that must be considered in any discussion here. What got us here is largely due to a lack of transparency and privacy that affords the opportunity to recast the whole dynamic for the better.

Knix, a Canadian underwear brand, has been working almost exclusively remotely and plans to do so for at least the next 12 months, according to founder Joanna Griffiths. In 2020, the company permanently closed its original office located in Toronto. But in 2022, Griffiths is planning to open a new 30,000-square-foot office, which is slightly smaller than its old office, that is more compatible with Knix’s new, remote-friendly work style.

“It’s a blessing for us that we have the time to completely redesign our next office for the way we work now,” Griffiths said. “Our new space is centered around a three-story atrium. You can see what everyone is working on; it’s very spacious and open. We’re building our own innovation lab within it. It’s built for the new way we work.”

Griffiths said the new office will cater to the tasks that actually need to be done in person, like developing products. And less space will be taken up by standard desks. The thinking is that employees don’t need to come into the office just to sit on their computers with headphones on, Griffiths said. That kind of work can be done from home, while the office will be available for key meetings and physical tasks that require in-person attendance.

“I don’t see a world in which we’ll ever 100% go back to the office,” Griffiths said. “A few people, like the product team, will have to go in, but everyone else can come and go as they please. Working remotely has been good for us as an organization; our people want to work that way now.”

Other brands predict in-office work will come back sooner. Kate Spade, for example, is planning to open its Park Avenue office to all employees in October, but the company will require vaccinations for any staff that wants to come in, according to CMO Jenny Campbell.

That requirement is consistent across all of Kate Spade’s sibling brands under the parent company Tapestry. But like Knix, Campbell said Kate Spade will only require necessary employees to come in full-time.

“Right now we have 90% of people still working from home and it will probably stay that way,” Campbell said. “The product [team] will still have to come in, to feel materials and things like that. But my team — marketing — can work remotely very easily, aside from doing photo shoots.”

The one concern Campbell raised was the continued difficulty of building a strong workplace culture when people are working with others they’ve never met before. She said attempts to do so virtually, through casual Zoom meetups, are fun, but not a thorough replacement for talking in person.

In-office work can be particularly helpful for international brands looking to establish a business in a new country. In the last 18 months, Knix has hired more than a dozen U.S.-based employees, where it had none before, in an effort to build up its presence in the U.S. Those U.S. employees are remote for now, but there will eventually be a Knix office in the U.S.

Officine Generale, a Parisian brand, has done something similar, opening a New York office in May (that requires vaccinations) in anticipation of opening 10 U.S. stores over the next 12 months. Officine Generale founder Pierre Maheo said it’s important to have an in-person office in the new market to provide others within the company a better understanding of the region. He said that having employees work remotely in the U.S. wouldn’t have provided the same level of collaboration.

“Having an office in another region is really important,” said Maheo. “For European brands, if you want to sell in the U.S., you should recruit American people. They understand the culture [better than you do], even if you visit the country all the time. You won’t get [that understanding] unless you have a permanent, in-person presence there.”

The role of editor-in-chief looks a lot different than what it did 20 years ago — or even two years ago. 

For digital-first media companies, the nuances of what it takes to run a successful newsroom, particularly during a pandemic, are more complicated than ever before. For Vox Media, it meant having two new top editors for its brands Vox and The Cut, who have fresh perspectives on what the job means.

At the beginning of this year, Swati Sharma and Lindsay Peoples Wagner took the reins of Vox and The Cut, respectively. Both are still early in their careers — when they were appointed, Sharma was 34 and Peoples Wagner was 30 — but they have already accomplished a goal that for many is the ultimate sign of success in the journalism career path. This is Sharma’s first time leading a newsroom as the top editor Peoples Wagner previously was the editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue but is familiar with The Cut having previously been its fashion market editor from 2015 until 2018. Now both are leaning on those past experiences, and each other, to achieve success.

This episode is the first in a four-part series for the Digiday Podcast called “The Modern Newsroom Leader” featuring editors-in-chief as they navigate new industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices.

Digiday spoke with Sharma and Peoples Wagner in a joint interview.

Below are highlights from the conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length.

Defining the role of editor-in-chief

Peoples Wagner: Since I was already an editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue, I knew the kind of role that I wanted to make it into myself. And I do feel like, traditionally, in fashion publications, there’s definitely either the editor-in-chief being a workhorse and you maybe don’t know that much about them, or they’re the face of the brand, but the team is really doing the bulk of the work. I always felt like that infrastructure really didn’t make sense. 

To be honest I think as an editor-in-chief, you have to be a bit front-facing and The Cut obviously being tied to fashion and culture, has a lot of front-facing [obligations]. But at the beginning and end of each day, it’s all about the work. I took this job because I’m hungry to do the work. I want to make an incredibly ambitious body of work in my career and so I think that some of the outward things have changed, or maybe some of the ways that we talk about this work has changed. But ultimately, I think both of our goals are to make great work and to make our audiences feel seen and heard.

Leading with a purpose

Sharma: I never thought I would become an editor-in-chief, even a year ago. The way that I’ve approached every job that I’ve had in journalism is I think about the skills I want to develop at the next job. I had four different jobs at The Washington Post, [two or three jobs] at the Boston Globe, and what I always did was think about what I wanted to get out of each opportunity. So yes I have had a lot of different jobs at a lot of various amazing publications, but the thing that kept me going is my own personal goal, which is, I believe that ignorance is the root of a lot of societal ills and I believe that information and knowledge can eradicate a lot of the problems in our society. 

Journalism needs to reach a lot of diverse communities and that has always been something that drives me, no matter what position I have, whether it was hyper-local news or the managing editor at the Atlantic. Vox’s whole mission is to provide clarity to its audience. We write for the people and when I was thinking about what could take me away from The Atlantic, this position at Vox really, really spoke to me. 

Battling burnout from experience 

Sharma: One of my jobs was to work on breaking news on the weekends at the Washington Post during the 2016 election and the Trump years, so I’m very familiar with what this news cycle does to us. I really do believe that our journalism can only be as good as our newsroom culture, and caring about the people we work with is just so incredibly important. The newsroom culture has to be tied to employee well-being and without that, I just think you really can’t deliver on the journalism that we’re supposed to deliver.

Peoples Wagner: There’s definitely this heightened feeling of always having to be on, whether it’s reading something, or posting something, or engaging with people on social media — these kinds of jobs just require a certain level of brain power. Specifically working on The Cut, the funniest thing that you go through is that you can be watching something and then start to think, “Oh, maybe we should cover that person.” Your brain just continuously is going. My husband actually gave me a suggestion a couple years ago that I thought was crazy when he said it, but he was totally right. I log off and you cannot find me on the weekends. I think it’s the best thing I have ever done.

“We’ve got a phrase here that we’ve got to keep our head on a swivel to make sure we’re watching at all times for what’s happening with Covid, the variants and how guests are feeling at our restaurants,” said Denny’s CMO John Dillion. “Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been focused on consumer needs of value, comfort, convenience and reassurance. Reassurance has really emerged [as a priority] to make sure guests know it’s safe to eat at Denny’s.” 

Denny’s isn’t the only brand leaning into safety messaging as the Delta variant has continued to rise. In December 2020, Alaska Airlines worked with Mekanism to create a lighthearted spot featuring the Men Without Hats tune “Safety Dance” to show how the airline was handling safety. That ad is making a comeback, according to Lisa Zakroff, managing director at Mekanism. 

“The video aimed to not just show how clean our planes were but to get people to trust that their fellow-fliers were following the rules,” said Zakroff. “The campaign was so successful — and because of continued COVID-19 concerns — we are now running the spot in new markets who have not seen it before.”

By working to reassure customers that planes or restaurants may be safe to be in, some brands are aiming to keep consumer concerns at bay. At the same time, other brands are touting convenience — i.e. using the retail app to order products for buy online/pick-up in person or free shipping — rather than safety to address consumer concerns without having to directly address the Delta variant. 

“Brands are not only using the safety message of being safe, but also the convenience element,” said Albert Moufarrij, CMO at digital agency MACH9. “It depends on the hierarchy of the messaging; some customers prefer convenience over safety.” 

Even so, some say that there are brands that would like to ignore the rise of the Delta variant altogether. “My sense is that there is ‘Delta variant denial,’” noted one agency exec, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It feels like business as usual with a lot of mandates out there. I think that as trips get canceled, airlines and hotels will ramp up [reassurance and safety] messaging.”

3 Questions With Cloud Paper’s head of partnerships Sarah Vincenti

How is Cloud Paper thinking about a return to the office?

When we were first looking at office options last year, we really wanted a “center of gravity” or a hub for creative thinking and collaboration, even as the world shifted to remote. Now that the team is fully vaccinated, and local businesses are opening back up, we get together when we can for in-person brainstorms and meetings a few times per week. We will continue to be remote friendly, but provide options for employees like a central hub in Seattle and co-working spaces for remote team members. We don’t have any hard and fast rules — we want employees to be as comfortable as they can be, and that might mean different things to each person.

How does remote work affect company culture?

Cloud Paper, a direct-to-consumer toilet paper brand, has always had an open and collaborative culture. We’ve adopted a hybrid model between remote work and in-office work, so although we might not be physically all in the office as much as before, we take advantage of our time together to work collaboratively. This open culture has manifested itself in many ways, from internal decision making to dialogue with our customers. We stay on top of who our customers are and what they need through support, surveying and talking directly to them. This helps us understand their drives and needs, which enables us to refine and evolve our brand marketing message. 

How has Cloud Paper managed remote work in terms of hiring talent, creative work, etc.?

The prevalence of remote work has allowed us to expand our teams in ways that we didn’t originally anticipate. We’ve adopted a hybrid model where our headquarters are based in Seattle, but now have remote sites. Six months ago, I was a remote contractor helping Cloud Paper build up their marketing org, and now I’m one of two full-time employees based outside of HQ. As we continue to grow, we’ll be on the lookout for diverse, driven talent in Seattle and beyond. — Kimeko McCoy

By the Numbers

The role of influencers has become an increasingly important piece of the marketer’s playbook. Countless brands ranging from the likes of Ace Hardware to WebEx have launched influencer marketing efforts with many of them prioritizing the TikTok in hopes to expand reach to Gen Z audiences. But while advertisers are busy peddling influencers, new research from tech company Bazaarvoice shows that shoppers don’t always trust large scale influencers, including celebrities like Kim Kardashian or social media stars like Addison Rae. Find more details from the report below:

• 56% of survey respondents said everyday social media users are the type of influencer they followed the most, followed by celebrities (34%), subject matter experts (29%) and social media stars (25%).
• When asked if they trust influencer content more now that advertising rules have been implemented across social media platforms, only 36% of consumers said yes.
• 18% of consumers trust sponsored content, while just 9% of respondents believe social media stars share genuine content. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the Week

“I’d be lying to you if [I said we] think we have the answer just yet. Right now, we’re just trying to figure out what is actually working.”

— Diarrha N’Diaye, founder of clean beauty brand Ami Colé, on managing the impact of iOS 14 on paid social media advertising.

What We’ve Covered

• With Google’s extension, the cookie hasn’t crumbled just yet. That’s led to a lack of urgency for some new ad products.
• Wondering what Ad-ID is? Watch this video.
• Auto advertisers are prioritizing digital ad dollars.

As parts of the world begin to move back outside, these subscribers are increasingly disengaged, taking their attention elsewhere — dinner out, the movies, etc. — and therefore pose a significant churn risk. These inactive subscribers are “zombie subscribers,” and they are becoming a real scare for publishers’ bottom lines. Here’s why they came about, and how to deal with them.

The rise of zombie subscribers threatens publisher revenue

Long-term subscriptions are built and sustained through a constant delivery of value. That’s the main difference between repeat purchases and one-offs. But as customer preferences change quickly, the balance between value and price is delicate. 

The sweet spot for the price of a subscription and the value it offers to the customer is all about alignment. Last year, with everyone stuck in quarantine, the value of a digital subscription was sky-high, and considering the lower price point, it’s unsurprising that so many more people purchased them. In 2020, Netflix added 37 million paying subscribers and The New York Times added 2.3 million new digital-only subscribers. 

Fast-forward to 2021 — consumers are now more able to spend money in-person rather than online. So, the value of online content has come down, creating a gap between perceived value and price for many who subscribed during quarantine. 

These subscribers are the walking dead — i.e., they are disengaged — and the moment they’re asked to resubscribe, they’ll churn. However, their future subscription revenue has already been built into financial models with a 24–36 month lifetime value. The money is already being spent and it’s creating big risks for revenues and publishers’ bottom lines. This process is already underway: Traffic to publisher sites is down about 27%, losing them two years of growth.  

Deliver consistent, relevant value to justify subscription rates

Many subscription businesses have fought the war against the undead — their churn risks — with traditional tactics, such as discounts for resubscription, free tote bags or gifts, refer-a-friend bonuses and so on. Unfortunately, these approaches miss the mark. 

Even if these offers help get readers through the door, a tote bag won’t keep them engaged and paying for months to come. The only way to retain customers is through consistent, relevant value — meaning new, genuine value each and every month to justify the continuation of subscription payments. 

To deliver consistent, relevant value to readers and re-engage zombie subscribers, the answer lies in personalizing the subscriber experience.

For publishers focused on content as a product, the subscription experience covers everything from the articles the readers see to the offers they are given, including the following steps to optimize audiences’ digital experience:

• Leverage first-party data collected on registrations to cater to each audience’s preferences, including online activity and relevant personal information. 
• Connect data sets to deliver personalized offers across all touchpoints, including email marketing and on-site pop-ups.
• Iterate and A/B test messaging and offers to increase conversions using a powerful subscription experience platform. 
• Segment readers by content interests such as sports, news and politics, and offer them more of what they already consume.
• Localize pricing and packaging to deliver value to each market, including adjusting for geography or demographic.

Personalization increases value for subscribers and reduces churn

The results of realignment? Renewal, retention and revenue.

Personalization enables direct value realignment, over and over again. And with the right tools, this is achievable at scale. One-size-fits-all experiences no longer cut it for digital audiences, but an infinite — or at least, highly segmented — array of subscriber journeys keeps readers engaged and paying.

It is worth investing in, too, considering it costs between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. As publishers enter a period of engagement drop-off, they must maximize the subscription experience for all their readers, particularly the zombies that pose the largest churn threat. 

Publishers who understand their audience and their incentives will be able to provide consistent, relevant value for consumers, aligning the value offered to subscribers with the price charged over a customer’s lifetime. 

Personalization raises the value of an experience, and this is the best retention strategy for news and media. It leaves readers with a lasting impression that keeps them engaged and subscribed. Net new subscribers may look like an indicator of growth, but increased churn will surely wipe out these gains. The path to genuine long-term revenue and profit growth lies in re-engaging churn risks, and bringing those costly zombies back to life.