TU Media talks about subscription growth, digital transformation and the changing landscape in Norway
TU Media has been delivering news, insights and content about technology to the Norwegian public since 1854. Starting life as Polyteknisk Tidsskrift – the oldest magazine of its kind in the world – the brand has blossomed into a multifaceted media company driving innovation and creativity among technologists and engineers through its publications tu.no, digi.no and Teknisk Ukeblad, events and services.
An area where TU Media has shown tremendous growth is in subscriptions, to boosting conversions by 40% and reducing churn by 20%.
One of the steps in TU Media’s subscription journey has been taking part in the FIPP/Atlas Subscription Growth Course. To discuss their experiences during the course, the company’s digital transformation and the changing media landscape in Norway, we caught up with Svein-Erik Hole, Digital Media Editor and Head of Subscriptions, and Jonathan Janssen, Head of Product Development.
Why did TU Media sign up to the FIPP/Atlas Subscription Growth Course?
Svein-Erik Hole: We are quite new to digital subscriptions and have been doing it for six years. We’re a small company so we are always trying to learn about tactics, the best cases and how we can learn from others to improve – even though we have done quite well, with almost 35,000 subscribers now. So, we have done fairly well, but we are trying to become even more professional and want to speed things up.
What were the highlights of the course for you?
Svein-Erik Hole: We had good discussions in the breakout rooms with all the publishers and took away some advice about the pricing models and how to find the right price. That was a very good outcome. I would say the course is a very good introduction and 360-degree view of subscriptions for publishers that are quite new into this kind of business.
Jonathan Janssen: Yes, and we also got confirmation that some of the things that we are doing is correct, which is always important.
How much has your audience changed over the years as you’ve embraced digital subscriptions?
Svein-Erik Hole: Well, the printed magazine was a controlled subscription to the engineering unions, while digital subscriptions opens up a much wider audience. Now we are attracting CEOs and other people doing business within tech, not only the engineers. All leading national politicians also subscribe. What we are trying to do is to create a meeting place between the tech industry and the decision-makers. We’re trying to show how technology can play a vital role in the Norwegian community. And we are trying to attract a younger audience. That’s something you don’t get from being 170 years old!
Jonathan Janssen: We try to work on differentiating between the paper magazine and digital, so it’s a whole new world. But a lot of people still think about the paper magazine when they think of us. So, we have to market what we really are now because we write a lot more online compared to what we did with the paper magazine.
How has the move to digital changed staffing at TU Media?
Svein-Erik Hole: I started at the company 12 years ago and at that time we had the same number of employees, around 70, with two people working on digital and the rest were print-focused. Two years later, it was the opposite. Over the last 10 years, two people have been focusing on print and all the rest on digital. From January 1st, we are shutting down the print magazine and only doing digital.
How is the rise of AI affecting operations at TU Media?
Svein-Erik Hole: AI is very important for many reasons. Efficiency is an obvious one.
For the editorial team the most important thing is how you can dig out stories you would not find without big data. So, we’re looking a lot into that. We are about to release a text-to-speech solution, because we know that many subscribers prefer reading audio text instead of reading text. We had the national budget release two weeks ago and we made the entire budget searchable through AI so the audience could find out information for themselves. So, we’re trying to use AI as a tool to improve journalism and improve efficiency. But we will never release raw data live. It has to be checked by our journalists before it goes out.
How important is sustainability when it comes to your content?
Svein-Erik Hole: When it comes to editorial content, it’s key in most of what we do. Renewable energy is one of our most important topics. Electric cars and of course AI are important sustainability topics as well. Microsoft is now building power plants to feed AI with energy, so I believe having a sustainability focus goes into everything within tech. Customers also expect a tech company to be conscious of these issues.
Jonathan Janssen: Yes, and in Norway we have oil and gas that’s like a number one industry and how we are going to transform oil and gas into something sustainable in the future is a very important topic.
How has the media landscape changed in Norway over the last few years and what does the future look like?
Svein-Erik Hole: We have a couple of huge media companies that are dominating the markets and have a very big share. So, it’s quite difficult to stand alone like we do because they have the power in the tech divisions and stuff like that. And then you have the distribution that is dramatically changing. Facebook is losing power as a referral channel. Google is starting to struggle, at least from organic searches, even though discovery is coming as a new source. So, I believe the direct relation between the publisher and the end consumer is getting more important.
