"The road to creating a successful corporate culture in the new hybrid work era is lined with landmines, but it is also loaded with new opportunities for more diverse, more motivated, and more talented workforces. Financial sustainability was already a dicey challenge pre-Covid. Companies producing ... undifferentiated content for unengaged audiences on the back of display advertising were doomed in the long run. That long run was shortened to a matter of months. The companies that were already diversified were able to adapt and diversify further, bolstering streams that were working (subscription-driven newsletters), pivoting on streams that had to change (live events to virtual events), and adding new or enhancing existing streams that fit the moment (e-learning, clubs, and ecommerce). Publishers who were already creating unique content found readers willing and eager to pay for it. Readers reacted positively to long-form journalism, while also finding utility in quick-hit, information-packed short-form pieces and graphic-only content. Video in all its glories - searchable, animation, personalised, live, interactive, social media (TikTok), etc. - flourished. Some print publishers, while taking the expected hit from newsstand shut-downs, pivoted to a strategy of increasing quality and price while decreasing frequency, and they found ready, hungry, and growing audiences. Other print publishers leveraged the print media's reputation as a trusted source of information to drive subscriptions and sales of one-off topical publications. In a world awash in misinformation, readers have shown a willingness to pay for information they know they can trust. Audiences also began to reward media companies who engaged in and promoted their sustainable activities by voting with their subscription payments and donations for corporate environmental responsibility." (Executive summary, page 4) more

"FIPP and paywall market leaders CeleraOne have carried out a survey to gauge the global state of affairs when it comes to digital subscription offerings by leading media companies in different countries. The results gathered from 95 publishers in 11 nations – Argentina, Canada, Finland, France, G ... ermany, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. - give an important insight into how paywalls and subscribers are evolving. The benchmark report arrives at a pivotal moment in the evolution of paywall strategies. While Covid-19 has resulted in a wave of digital subscriptions as the public went looking for information about the crisis, the question is whether the post-Covid period will have the opposite effect. “We are entering an interesting period because most of the people who subscribed did so because they needed firsthand information about Covid in their local area, or just needed entertainment in times of social distancing,” says York Walterscheid, Managing Director of CeleraOne. “The question now becomes, how do you keep such a good conversion rate? Most of the publishers need to be very careful in saying: ‘My strategy worked out and I can now rest on my laurels.’ It is crucial for publishers to look at their post-Covid strategy now." (Introduction, page 4-5) more