“Luckily that’s when the subscription bootcamp came in,” said Dipanjan Dutta, Head of Business Operations, ABP Digital, who credited this programme, organised by WAN-IFRA and supported by the Meta Journalism Project India, in helping them accelerate the pace of their plans.

For ABP Digital, “the idea was very clear,” Dutta said during a presentation at WAN-IFRA’s recent Digital Media India event. “How do we move from the volume metrics to the content quality metrics and embark upon a reader revenue journey?”

To do this, he said they realised they had to focus on engagement, and to improve it, they decided to concentrate on two key metrics: The amount of time readers spent on a page and the number of pages they looked at per session.

As part of their process, Dutta said ABP Digital undertook experiments to improve engagement at three levels by using:

• Story-level experiments: such as modifying print headlines for online, and including sub-lines with all articles
• Site-wide experiments: including the production of premium content and deepening their multi-media content, such as videos. Dutta added that, as was stressed in the bootcamp, premium content does not mean that a story is “exclusive,” but rather that it has a unique angle or distinct perspective for a publisher’s audience. 
• Cultural alignment: Getting everyone to focus on not only reach but also engagement.

Going forward, he said they are aiming to do a broader redesign of the article page to include things such as the introduction of a summary, more dynamic infographics, more highlighted quotes, as well as creating polls around articles.

Results due to structure, measurement

Dutta said their engagement scores, which were between 40 and 60 for the premium articles, have greatly improved. “We have recorded about 80 percent growth; so it’s a brilliant response that we have seen from the audience,” he said.

He added that while ABP Digital had produced premium articles in the past, the crucial difference now was due to the fact that they were doing them in a much more structured, measured and focussed manner. 

Next steps: More experiments and a redesign

Dutta said there are more things they want to do in terms of their site-wide content and experiments. One is the redesigning of the homepage.

“We want to look at redesigning the homepage itself for improved visibility and discovery of stories so that we have more reads per session,” he said.

ABP Digital also has introduced a curated topical section, which is currently focused on the war in Ukraine.

“This section is extremely important, and gets great traction,” Dutta said. “And what we really need to do is curate all stories related to a certain event or development that is happening. We want to build on the fantastic response we have got,” he said.

Another major element, which Dutta said is the most critical one for him, is ABP Digital’s cultural shift.

“All of us across business and editorial were talking about reach in terms of page views and users. What are we talking about now? It’s the reach plus engagement. It’s critical to have engagement in any of our discussions about what we are doing,” he said.

“Once the leadership was aligned,” he continued, “we drilled down to the length and breadth of the editorial team, which was crucial for individual responsibility and accountability to drive it.”

“What we have done is to create this whole measurement of the engagement score,” Dutta said.  “Unless you measure it, you don’t see it, and unless you see it, you don’t know which way it’s going. So, the measurement has been absolutely important. Based on that we have continued the analysis and more importantly, debate. It is important to have a healthy culture of debate within the editorial business and product development teams, as in which one should work, which experiment should we take up. If this is not working, can we tweak this and do it again? I think this is the best outcome of this engagement that we are going through today.”

Along with this, they are tracking things such as their five best engagement stories, as well as the five that underperform the most, which are sent to the staff every morning in the form of a report.

Three key outcomes

The bootcamp and the processes they have developed through it has led to three key outcomes, Dutta said.

• The change that they have seen within the user groups (Fans / Heavy users / Casual users)
• The change in average time spent
• The change in the overall engagement score

“What we see is a great starting base,” Dutta said. “I would say a 15 percent growth in the fans and a 60 percent growth in heavy users. We see a great story to start with.”

Each segment of user groups has increase in terms of the average time spent on content on the website. For the fan cohort, it has gone up about 28 percent. Heavy users have increased by 22 percent, but more importantly, even the casual users have gone up by 18 percent. 

Dutta noted that he wanted to qualify that the base that ABP Digital was starting from was small, but that the score nevertheless reflects “an incremental jump, which is absolutely motivating for us. But there’s a long way to go before we can say that significantly it’s a large base we can talk about,” he said.

Main challenges

Dutta also reflected on four challenges that ABP Digital has faced in their journey of transitioning towards a reader revenue model.

First, aligning business and then editorial to focus on engagement was a challenge, he said.

“It was hard for us to talk about engagement beyond the pageviews and unique users, but that was the first thing we had to do for ourselves and then get along editorial into the boat,” he said.

Second, the new skillsets, as well as multimedia and premium content. “It’s a different ballgame,” he said. “How do you create a whole structure to focus on premium content? That is a change that we need to build in.”

Third, is the nimbleness of the organisation across product, editorial and audience development to Test and Learn, and then move forward quickly. “We shouldn’t be waiting until the flavour is gone,” Dutta said.

Fourth, was the need for investment in new tools for A/B testing, etc.

The ways they have faced the challenges and the outcomes are proving worthwhile, Dutta noted.

“Change is in the air. We all know that engagement is the way forward to that, learning to be nimble, and finally, the subscription journey is a reality – a reader revenue strategy is being accepted across all departments,” he said.