Dana E. Neuts

Dana Neuts is Subscription Insider's Editorial Director, covering our daily subscription news as well as member features, case studies, premium content, and reports. Dana is also a writer, editor, marketer and communications professional. Her work has appeared in AARP Bulletin, The Seattle Times, Seattle Business, 425 Business, 425 Magazine, South Sound Magazine, Northwest Travel and more. Her specialties include business writing, community news, senior issues, travel and, of course, subscriptions!

Dana E. Neuts

Pandora Gets Advertisers to Pay for ‘Trial Offer’ for Potential Subscribers

Pandora, the popular internet radio platform, is testing out an aggressive new ad model to boost revenue and improve conversion. Under the new model, registered users can listen to Pandora for an hour ad free after clicking on a Sponsored Listing, which is essentially an on-air commercial. Partnering with Fox and Sony PlayStation as sponsors, Pandora has rolled out a beta version of this new ad model to 20% of Pandora’s non-paying listeners (about 14.6 million…

Microsoft Grows Subscriber Base 27% to 7 Million But Revenue Lags Behind

Office 365 Home and Personal gained 1.5 million subscribers last quarter, an increase of 27% over the previous quarter, bringing the total number of subscribers to 7.1 million, according to Microsoft’s most recent earnings report. On the surface, that figure is impressive, but the reality is that revenue for this segment of Microsoft’s business only increased by 3.6% last quarter, from $126.9 million in June to $131.5 million in September. Based on these figures, the revenue-per-customer…

Buzzfeed Measures Reader Reactions, Not Page Views

Hits. Page Views. Unique Visitors. Duration of Visit. For years, website and blog owners have used traditional website statistics and Google Analytics to measure web traffic. They serve up these stats to their advertisers to show customer engagement. The more eyeballs to their content, the more money they can charge their advertisers. Some sites also use this data to determine what type of content attracts and retains readers and viewers. But with the advent of new…

Washington Post Grows Subscriber Base by Expanding into Regional Markets

Earlier this year, the Washington Post announced a Newspaper Partner Program to grow its digital subscriber base. Starting in May, the Post began offering free digital access to its websites and mobile apps to subscribers of more than 120 regional, daily newspapers including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Dallas Morning News and the Toledo Blade. The regional newspapers benefit by offering additional content at no extra cost to subscribers, resulting in better retention. If readers were…

Video Viewing Survey Yields Surprising Results

Four out of 10 households in the U.S. have digital video subscriptions. This is just one of the statistics that came out of a comScore survey on video viewing habits last week. Given the heavy saturation of advertising of digital video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video, it would be easy to assume the results would be higher. Of those who do subscribe, however, 32% report their favorite digital video subscription service is…

CBS and HBO Announce New Digital Video Packages to Engage and Retain Subscribers

Yesterday CBS announced that it is launching a new digital subscription, video on-demand and live streaming service called CBS All Access. For a monthly fee of $5.99, subscribers can see their favorite television shows on CBS.com or on their mobile devices using iOS and Android apps. According to CBS News, subscribers can view more than 5,000 episodes of CBS classic shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and Family Ties from the CBS archives as well as episodes…

Digital Magazine Latterly to Rely Solely on Subscription Revenue and Donations

“No ads. No clutter. Just stories.” That’s the promise of new subscription start-up Latterly, an organization devoted to quality, long-form journalism. With plans to launch in November 2014, Latterly says it will offer four journalistic, long-form narratives monthly about people who are either facing change or pushing for it with a focus on social justice, diversity and progress. The website says its stories will be case studies on the state of our world. “Because of our…

Adapt or Die: FT Shares 4 Subscription Technology Lessons

Adapt or die. Like many traditional media companies, the Financial Times has had to evolve to meet its readers’ changing needs. It could no longer count on revenue from print subscriptions as they declined. Instead, FT had to address online competition head on, and adapt its subscription business model to be more nimble. FT CTO John O’Donovan told a recent roundtable hosted by Zuora, a cloud-based billing and subscription management services provider, “I challenge any company…

Amazon Launches Kindle Unlimited in the U.K. Amid Controversy

Avid readers in the U.K. can now get their Hunger Games fix on Kindle Unlimited, the latest launch by Amazon. Kindle Unlimited was first available only in the U.S., but has recently expanded to a U.K. reading audience. For £7.99 a month, subscribers can access an unlimited number of bestselling books including the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, previously unavailable on Kindle. At the time of the launch, subscribers could access more than…

Convenience Drives Mobile Subscription Sales, Particularly for Streaming Video On-Demand

In a July 2014 poll, 76% of smartphone owners and 55% of tablet owners have downloaded apps. Of those, 43% of mobile users paid a one-time cost for an app, according to a Harris Poll conducted for Branchfire, proving that consumers will pay for content delivered in convenient formats. The survey reported that 70% of respondents said they have downloaded 10 or more apps (free and paid), 43% downloaded 20 or more apps, and 20% downloaded…