By Eric BARADAT / AFP
Back in 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Amazon Prime members benefited from this buyout with a discounted press subscription. The American media outlet is now calling this exclusive promotion into question.
Back in 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million. Amazon Prime members benefited from this buyout with a discounted press subscription. The American media outlet is now calling this exclusive promotion into question.
Since 2015, Amazon Prime subscribers wishing to read the digital edition of the Washington Post have been given free access for six months, before having to sign up for a monthly subscription billed at $3.99. This is significantly less than other internet users who have to pay $9.99 per month.
But those days seem to be over. Amazon Prime members will now see their monthly subscription increase to $7.99, according to Nieman Lab. The increase will be effective with their next plan renewal date. It comes at a time when The Washington Post is experiencing economic stagnation after years of profitability.
The American daily newspaper has less than three million digital subscribers, according to the New York Times. Its rival has 8.8 million subscribers, more than 90% of which are online. Like the rest of the newspaper industry, the Post is also facing an erosion of its advertising revenues as many readers turn to free content on the Internet. Advertising revenue is estimated to have fallen to $70 million in the first half of the year, nearly 15% less than in the first half of 2021.
To attract new readers, the Post launched an innovative digital subscription offer in June. Its price: 50 dollars per year. Nothing very original there. However, the American daily announced that this amount will remain unchanged... until 2072. "This special offer celebrates The Washington Post’s longevity and looks far into the future,” said Mike Ribero, chief subscriptions officer, in a statement quoted byNieman Lab. “It’s a once-in-a-half-century deal.”
Innovating in the face of "churn"
This new formula aims to expand the Post's digital audience, while taking preemptive steps to prevent these new readers from canceling their subscription shortly after. A phenomenon known as "churn." It's an issue that today concerns a large part of the international press, as shown by a report carried out in 2021 by the media consulting firm Mather Economics.
The report indicates that the weekly churn rate for newspapers is 0.70%, and 0.85% for digital subscriptions. In other words, if a media company has 10,000 subscribers, it can expect 85 of them to cancel their subscription every week. That's 4,420 cancellations over the course of a year, or nearly half of its subscriber base.
Building reader loyalty is the top priority of the Washington Post and Jeff Bezos. The billionaire is clearly committed to the newspaper's strategy, as Steve Hills, then CEO of the publication, explained. "He's asking us to pay more attention to our readers than to our competitors and to forget about those who focus on short-term profits. What journalist wouldn't dream of that?" he told French publication Les Echos in 2015.
Seven years later, the Post no longer seems to be relying on the huge mass of Amazon Prime subscribers to win over new readers. Whether this strategy will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.
