As a result, many publishers are experimenting with their subscription strategies, including pricing, plans and subscriber benefits, to retain and boost subscriptions — a longtime revenue stronghold. 

Against this backdrop, Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics. 

We began by asking publishers how much of their revenue comes from various sources, including subscriptions — a question we’ve asked regularly over the last several years. Digiday’s annual third-quarter surveys from 2023, 2024 and 2025 found that on a weighted average basis subscriptions as a portion of publishers’ revenue has continued to increase year over year — climbing from a weighted average score of 1.57 in 2023, to 1.98 in 2024, to 2.60 in 2025. The weighted average increase indicates that publisher revenue from subscriptions has increased since 2023.

Similarly, when Digiday asked publishers how focused they are on building different parts of their business in the next six months, including subscriptions, publishers’ focus on building their subscriptions business has also increased on a weighted average basis over the same period, from a weighted average score of 2.24 in 2023, to 3.1 in 2024, to 3.26 in 2025. The increase in weighted average here represents how publishers have increased focus on building their subscription business since 2023.

These data points on publishers’ approach to subscriptions indicate that subscriptions will remain a focal point of publishers’ business and a key part of their revenue mix. 

The Digiday Subscription Index collects data from a list of publishers across a set of dimensions that describe their approaches to subscriptions. The Index then uses the dimensions to ascertain a publisher’s offerings and subscription priorities. Digiday+ Research also surveyed 38 publisher professionals during the third quarter of this year about their revenue streams including subscriptions.  

This report is based on information collected from 14 publishers:

• Bloomberg
• The Boston Globe
• BuzzFeed
• Chicago Tribune
• Forbes
• The Guardian
• Insider
• The Los Angeles Times
• The New York Times
• Salon
• USA Today
• Vox
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Washington Post

Digiday’s analysis found that, as a group, the indexed publishers’ annual subscription prices did not change significantly from 2024 to 2025. Overall, the group increased subscription prices by 5% year over year.

However, there was one outlier. Bloomberg increased its annual subscription pricing by a whopping 33% year over year — up from $299 annually in 2024 to $399 in 2025. 

In fact, Bloomberg’s price increase was so great that it significantly affected the overall group’s average increase rate of 5%. When Digiday removed Bloomberg from the analysis, the group’s average increase rate fell to only 2%.

Bloomberg quietly made its news subscription price change in 2025 after also publicly announcing in October 2024 that pricing for its Bloomberg Terminal service, a financial software that provides real-time market data and analytics, would increase by 6.5% in 2025. At the time, Bloomberg said the Terminal increase was “linked to weighted global inflation over the prior two-year period.” The publisher’s decision to increase its Terminal pricing likely affected its news subscription pricing, as Bloomberg’s news coverage is deeply integrated with Bloomberg Terminal’s real-time financial market data capabilities. 

Interestingly, Bloomberg did not make substantial changes to its subscriber benefits to help offset the subscription price increase — an indicator that Bloomberg’s premium financial data alone is enough to draw subscribers. 

Bloomberg did introduce online games in 2025 (more on this later) but the games are free and not a subscription perk. However, subscribers do have access to archived games and can save their scores for later reference. 

To analyze trends across price points, Digiday split the indexed publishers into three groups — donation-based (non-profit), low-priced and high-priced. A publisher’s category was determined by whether it offered an annual subscription rate (excluding discounts) that was below, above or the same as the average subscription price for non-donation-based publishers.

Offering a bundled subscription option emerged as a clear trend among publishers in the high-priced category. All indexed publishers that offered bundled subscriptions — The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal — were in the high-priced group. 

Of those, The New York Times was the only publisher that offered a bundle as part of its base subscription package, which costs $325. The Wall Street Journal, which calls its bundled package WSJ+, and the Chicago Tribune, which refers to its bundle as Premium, both charge more for their bundled subscriptions — $715 and $363.48, respectively — than their base subscriptions. 

While The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune’s bundled subscriptions are significantly more expensive than their base subscription prices, the bundles provide additional subscriber benefits like exclusive audio and video content and newsletters to justify the higher pricing.

The New York Times did not increase its annual base subscription price in 2025 and only marginally changed its promotional discount for first-time subscribers — from a 42% discount in 2024 to a 46.46% discount in 2025.

Even so, The New York Times’ subscription pricing remains one of the highest among indexed publishers. Similar to The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times does give subscribers access to a range of benefits like podcasts and recipes. 

In September 2025, The New York Times also began offering a family subscription plan to reach new subscribers, improve retention and increase subscription revenue. “Family subscriptions in many ways is the biggest change to our subscription structure in a number of years,” Ben Cotton, The New York Times’ head of subscriber growth, told Digiday in September. 

The family plan allows up to four people, including friends, to join one plan and provides access to news and non-news products, such as games and recipes. A family subscription costs $360 annually, slightly more than The New York Times’ base subscription plan at $325.

Digiday’s analysis found that another trend this year among publishers in the high-priced group involved their strategies related to games, including launching puzzle games and adding proprietary games.

Several publishers make games available for non-subscribers. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Guardian and BuzzFeed all offer games as non-gated content — meaning players are never asked to subscribe to access the games. The New York Times and the Boston Globe offer a select set of games as subscriber-exclusive content.

Many publishers refresh games with new content on a daily or weekly basis. This is key for publishers who look to games as a way to encourage readers to return to their sites with regularity, so that publishers can serve them ads and promote subscriptions. 

Bloomberg is one example of a publisher that employs this strategy. When Bloomberg released its Pointed game in March 2025, Marissa Zanetti-Crume, global head of product at Bloomberg Media, said one of the publisher’s goals was to encourage audiences to engage with Bloomberg’s journalism. “This launch is a strategic next step in our audience-first approach — designing experiences that drive habitual use and spark new connections with our content,” Zanetti-Crume said. 

And the strategy appears to be working. In a September 2025 press release, Bloomberg said that about 80% of subscribers who play its AlphaDots game, which refreshes daily, come back every week to play the game — a number that has increased since launch.

Another approach, Digiday found, is to include games in subscription packages to add value for consumers. The New York Times, for example, which acquired Wordle in 2022 and has focused on its games strategy for several years, includes games in its subscription bundle.

Similarly, the Boston Globe provides access to the Global Games section of its website within its group subscription package. In an April 2025 press release about its Align game, Michelle Micone, svp of innovation and strategic initiatives at Boston Globe Media, said games can provide a much-needed break from news content and may sway potential subscribers to convert. 

“We challenge our team to think outside the box to provide our subscribers with digital offerings that are interactive, entertaining and offer a respite from the usual news cycle,” Micone said. “A [2023] Digital News Report from Reuters showed that 21% of adults in the U.S. who subscribe to news are motivated to do so because of games and puzzles, and based on the increased plays we have seen, we suspect our audience feels similarly.”

Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report found that 11% of consumers who have not paid for online news in the past year would be interested in a bundle that included additional services like games or sports, along with the news. And 21% of non-payers might be encouraged to pay for online news by receiving one of the following options: a bundle with additional services like games or sports; access to more than one news provider; or paying per day, per week or per article for news content.

Digiday’s analysis found that several non-donation publishers offered subscriber-exclusive newsletters this year. These subscriber-exclusive newsletters were typically limited to just a handful per publisher, with the majority of newsletters available to non-subscribers. And none of the publishers included in this year’s Index offered only subscriber-exclusive newsletters. The main differences among publications’ subscriber-exclusive newsletters were the topics they covered — ranging from a “daily explainer” available to subscribers of Vox to business and market summaries for subscribers of The Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg offers an example of an interesting newsletter strategy, unique among the indexed publishers: While Bloomberg’s subscriber-exclusive newsletters were accessible through a standard news subscription, the publisher also offered an option to subscribe only to its subscriber-exclusive newsletters. This newsletter-only subscription option, Bloomberg’s technology newsletter bundle, was priced at $142.88 per year — 64.2% less than an annual full-priced news subscription at $399.

Compared to other publishers included in this year’s Index, Bloomberg has a large finance and technology audience. While most publishers rely on newsletters to generate email ad revenue or expect them to act as a pipeline to convert subscribers by showcasing or linking to gated news content, Bloomberg’s example illustrates a method of monetizing a specific audience by offering, in this case, a tech-focused newsletter bundle. 

Among all of the publishers included in this year’s Index, Vox made the biggest strategy change from 2024 to 2025. Since April 2020, Vox was a donation-based publication, allowing free access to all of its articles. However, the publisher moved away from that format this year by adding a paywall. 

In January 2025, Vox announced that it would transition to a subscription-based business model. “Our audience will now begin to see a paywall after they’ve read a number of stories each month,” Swati Sharma, publisher and editor-in-chief of Vox, said in a press release. “We’re hoping that this will encourage you [readers] to invest in our journalism and join our member community.” 

Vox’s annual subscription price of $60 is slightly more than the publisher’s 2024 suggested donation amount of $50. But, with a first-time subscriber promotional discount, the subscription price drops to $40. 

Currently, Vox’s subscriber benefits include an exclusive newsletter and digital magazine. But based on the trends identified in this year’s Index, it will be interesting to see whether the publisher adds games or subscription bundles to its strategy in the future.