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Title
How Business Insider's AI-based paywall strategy increased conversions by 75%
…connect with top publishing leaders SECURE YOUR SEAT Digiday Publishing Summit How Business Insider’s AI-based paywall strategy increased conversions by 75% By Kayleigh Barber September 25, 2024 Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit Ivy Liu…
Description
Business Insider replaced its editorially-driven freemium paywall with a machine-learning-based smart paywall that decides which content to paywall for each user based on prior reading habits, referral platform, and each content genre's propensity to convert. In testing from December to April, total conversions increased more than 75% versus the control, with 60% of new conversions coming from stories that would never have been paywalled before. Applying AI to the registration wall as well increased registrations by 300%.
…up finding was that, once the friction rate was higher for the smart paywall, “total conversions [increased] more than 75% versus the control and that’s something that we couldn’t have achieved if we had tried…
Company
Business Insider
…are most likely to convert audiences into paid readers. This is the thesis that Business Insider’s chief subscriptions officer Katie Friedman had when she joined the company last year: A smart paywall that uses machine le…
Industry
Media & Entertainment
…giday+ Research WTF Series Newsletters Only a few spots left to join us for the Digiday Publishing Summit Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders SECURE YOUR…
Problem
Business Insider's previous editorially-driven "freemium" paywall only paywalled articles written by a specific subset of journalists tasked with subscriber content, leaving a significant amount of other content on the site that would never prompt readers to pay to access it.
…s an editorially-driven free/premium, or “freemium,” model in which only the articles written by a specific subset of journalists on the edit team ( those tasked with writing solely subscriber content ) were paywalled. This left a significant amount of other content on the publisher’s site…
Solution
Business Insider's chief subscriptions officer worked with a vendor to build a smart paywall using machine learning that determines which content individual users are most likely to pay to access, based on their previous reading habits, the platform they arrived from, and each content genre's propensity to convert readers; the same AI-based approach was also applied to the registration wall, replacing a metered approach that triggered after five read articles.
…the publisher’s site that would never prompt readers to pay to access it. The new smart paywall instead determines the content that individual users are most likely to pay to access based on their previous reading habits, which platform they come to the website from and the propensity that each genr…
Business value
In testing from December to April, total conversions increased more than 75% versus the control, with 60% of new conversions coming from "non-premium" stories that would never have been paywalled under the old model. Applying AI to the registration wall increased registrations by 300%.
…end of the testing period, which spanned December to April, Friedman said that 60% of new conversions happened on “non-premium” stories, meaning stories that never would have been paywalled in the previous model. “E…
AI capabilities
Machine Learning, Recommendation & Personalization
…subscriptions officer Katie Friedman had when she joined the company last year: A smart paywall that uses machine learning can increase conversion rates and, ultimately, boost the total revenue yielded from online audiences. During…
Implementation approach
The team tested the smart paywall against the old paywall from December to April before deciding to roll it out to 100% of their audience in May. An early issue was that a low friction rate (how often the paywall was shown) limited the AI's ability to learn to convert readers; once the friction rate was increased, conversions rose more than 75% versus the control.
…Friedman shared how her team worked with a vendor to build a smart paywall and talked about the tests they conducted that led them to the decision to roll it out to 100% of their audience in May. Personalizing the paywall experience Business Insider’s previous paywall strat…
