Trend Snapshot: Media in the subscription economy

Discusses the importance of subscriptions in a time of declining print revenues through digital advertising sales and explores how best to tackle them in order to better engage consumers.

Trend overview

As media companies struggle to compensate for declining print revenues through digital advertising sales, many are turning their focus to subscriptions.

Buoyed by consumers’ willingness to pay for quality content on platforms such as Netflix and Spotify – as well as the broader rise of the direct-to-consumer subscription business model – publishers including The New York Times, The Guardian and The Economist are rebalancing their business models with a greater emphasis on digital subscriptions.

With some predicting a decline in consumer exposure to advertising, the rise of the ‘subscription economy’...

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