Digital News Bundles: Analyzing Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Cross-Publisher Journalistic Bundles

Abstract

The landscape of journalism is rapidly evolving, with bundled subscription offerings from the New York Times, Apple and Schibsted becoming increasingly important. These offerings allow consumers to access a wide variety of content in multiple formats, representing a significant shift in how news and information are consumed. However, the impact of these offerings on publishers’ revenues remains underexplored in journalism and media research. The results suggest that bundled offers generate higher revenues for publishers than individual offers. This supports the introduction of internal “all-access” bundles within the European journalism sector, as well as external collaborations between unaffiliated publishers. However, the relatively small differences in revenues suggest that there is limited strong evidence to support the adoption of a centralized, cross-publisher “Spotify for News” model.

1. Introduction

Over the past year, the growth rate of digital journalism subscriptions has slowed significantly in several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (Newman et al. 2023). In the midst of the ongoing cost of living crisis, journalism publishers face a number of challenges. These challenges include increased price sensitivity leading to subscription cancellations, difficulty in retaining subscribers as they transition from discounted introductory offers to full-price plans, and the issue of perceived value versus cost among consumers accustomed to accessing news for free (Newman and Robertson 2023). In addition, consumers are increasingly choosing entertainment subscriptions, such as streaming services, over journalistic content (Groot Kormelink 2023; Newman and Robertson 2023).

In response to these challenges, some publishers are focusing on expanding their offerings of cross-publisher products to both attract new subscribers and retain existing ones. In particular, the success of the New York Times in offering an “all-inclusive” bundle of content has sparked a debate on the development of bundling strategies to enhance the attractiveness of digital journalistic offerings (Newman 2024). It is expected that such strategies will evolve to include not only internal combinations but also collaborations with unaffiliated publishers (Newman 2024).

In recent years, corporate-owned offerings such as Schisted’s Full Tilgang and Amedia’s All+ have evolved in Europe. Similar models have remained limited and stable in Germany (Buschow et al. 2023). One possible reason for this may be the less saturated German market, where the digital transformation of the media and users’ subscription behavior is lagging behind other countries. According to the Reuters Digital News Report, past payments in Germany remain at a low level, with 13% of the online population stating that they paid for digital journalism in 2023 (Newman et al. 2024). In addition, more than one in four subscriptions is a combination of a print and digital subscription.

Current research (Behre et al. 2023) suggests that access to several news websites could serve to convince more people in Germany to pay for digital journalism. In the 18–24 age group, 14 percent and just under 10 percent of all respondents claimed that such an offer could possibly persuade them to do so. Other research (Newman and Robertson 2023) confirms these observations for different countries.

German publishers are especially reluctant to partner with external subscription-based platforms such as Readly, which bundle content from various newspapers and magazines but retain a significant share of the revenue based on reader engagement in terms of both frequency and volume, conditions that publishers find disadvantageous (Fleischer 2021). It appears more likely that they are developing favorable models independently, as demonstrated by the recent launch of the “alles.plus” platform under the guidance of Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Despite the evolution of bundled models in general, there is a notable lack of research in journalism and media studies that examines the revenue implications of cross-publisher offerings. However, they are considered a viable strategy to potentially increase consumers’ willingness to pay (Borchgrevink-Brækhus and Moe 2023; Newman and Robertson 2023). A limited body of literature (Erbrich et al. 2024; Wellbrock and Buschow 2020) has already dealt with potential effects on revenues due to bundling. However, these studies only consider centralized products in detail and lack consideration of other variations, as well as only examining small sample sizes.

This study pioneers the investigation of revenue differences between different bundled and individual journalistic products that could also be appealing for publishers. It poses the following research question in general.

RQ: How does the bundling of different publishers and formats likely affect publishers’ revenues in Germany?

To answer this question, this study employs two established marketing research methods: the Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) and the Gabor–Granger method (GGM). These methods measure consumers’ willingness to pay by asking respondents about their likelihood of subscribing to various journalistic products and converting these responses into subscription probabilities. This allows for the calculation of demand and revenue potential curves, providing valuable insights into the economic implications of bundling strategies.

Furthermore, a comprehensive bundle that includes both regional and national content in a centralized design is predicted to have the highest revenue potential. This design addresses different consumer preferences and should reduce differences in willingness to pay by offering a wide range of content that appeals to a broader audience. In addition, including regional and national content as complementary offerings in a single subscription could further increase revenues (Venkatesh and Kamakura 2003). This article is structured as follows. Initially, the Literature Review examines the current consumption habits of digital journalism users. It then presents the theoretical background of bundling and its applicability in digital journalism. Furthermore, this section explores examples of cross-publisher offerings, distinguishing between company-owned (internal) and external offerings in Germany. It then discusses previous studies on the market effects of cross-publisher bundling. The Results section compares the revenues of individual and bundled offers. The Discussion considers the potential for publishers to increase their revenues through bundling strategies and explains why the German journalism market is still dominated by individual offerings. Finally, recommendations that result from this research are provided for the design of products that are better aligned with consumer preferences. The limitations of the study are addressed in the last section.

2. Literature Review and Examples of Cross-Publisher Bundling

Consumers’ reading habits have undergone a significant shift, moving away from traditional bundles of newspapers and magazines to accessing journalism through various online platforms, such as news websites, social media and news aggregators (Bisceglia 2023). Research by Newman et al. (2019) suggests that half of all news consumers now access content from four or more sources on a weekly basis. In the digital landscape, news content is often repackaged and shared across platforms, mixing user-generated material with third-party articles (Carlson 2020). This transformation has impacted the profitability of traditional newspapers, influenced by strategic platform decisions, the battle for consumer attention and the gatekeeping function of these platforms (de Cornière and Sarvary 2018). As a result, news outlets are now competing for readership on a per-article basis, with news aggregators facilitating the consumption of individual articles from different sources without payment. This unbundling trend may lead to lower quality, revenue challenges and negative social consequences compared to the traditional consumption of bundled news products (Bisceglia 2023; Venkatesh and Chatterjee 2006).

Despite the growing importance of digital journalism, research on consumers’ engagement with paid content remains inconsistent. This is largely due to differences in how studies measure the intent to pay (PI) and willingness to pay (WTP) (O’Brien et al. 2020). In line with the results of O’Brien et al. (2020), the characteristics and variables of income, media use, news interest, free mentality and perceived quality have a clear dependency on WTP and PI. Users who actively engage with news are more likely to be willing to pay for online news products and have higher paying intent. Higher levels of news consumption correlate with higher willingness to pay. The perceived quality of digital journalism strongly influences PI. Consumers are more likely to pay for content that they perceive to be of high quality, reliable and valuable.

The reluctance to pay anything other than zero (“free mentality”) is a construct that contrary reduces PI (O’Brien 2022). Consumers are less likely to consider paying for news if they share the perception that online content should be free of charge.

Another aspect is that established news brands with strong reader trust tend to have more success with paywalls (Newman and Robertson 2023). Consumers are more likely to subscribe to or pay for content from a source that they trust and have a strong relationship with.

Currently, consumers are increasingly prioritizing entertainment subscriptions over journalistic media. This trend is driven by the less appealing and more negative nature of news content compared to entertainment media, especially in times of high inflation, when people are likely to reflect on their consumption behavior (Newman and Robertson 2023). The findings of Groot Kormelink (2023) support this observation, suggesting that some younger consumers are reluctant to pay for news because they already subscribe to entertainment media. The perception that journalism is a less valuable commodity than entertainment products remains a significant challenge. This is likely to be addressed by some publishers attempting to combine news and entertainment content in a single offering, such as the NYT’s “all-access” bundle.

Caswell (2019) argues that the challenges facing journalism are further exacerbated by the constraints placed on publishers when it comes to adapting to these evolving trends and devising innovative bundling approaches. Interestingly, this line of argument has received relatively little attention in the literature on cross-publisher product offerings. The predominant focus has been on examining the influence of news aggregators on journalism (Bisceglia 2023) and exploring strategies for publishers to partner with them (Amaldoss and Du 2023). This focus on aggregators has resulted in a notable gap in the literature regarding potential independent collaborative bundling initiatives.

This article explores whether news publishers can increase their revenues by bundling different products at a fixed price, a hypothesis supported by the findings of Bakos and Brynjolfsson (1999). By combining different offerings, publishers can attract a broader subscriber base with diverse preferences, effectively reducing the variation in consumers’ willingness to pay (Crawford and Yurukoglu 2012). Such a strategy allows sellers to capture a larger share of welfare compared to selling goods individually (Bakos and Brynjolfsson 1999; Shapiro and Varian 1999). Ideally, a large bundle would match the wide range of consumer preferences and provide access to a variety of goods and services that maximize the total utility.

Based on this theoretical framework, the following hypothesis is proposed for empirical testing.

H1. 

Publisher revenues from bundled products are significantly higher than revenues from individual products.

A growing body of literature has examined consumer preferences for cross-publisher subscription offerings. Subscribers, both existing and potential, express reservations about being tied to a single news outlet (Newman and Robertson 2023). They prefer access to multiple news sources at a significantly lower cost than individual subscriptions combined (Borchgrevink-Brækhus and Moe 2023; Kammer et al. 2015; and Schwaiger et al. 2022). Some news consumers cite this possibility as a factor that could convince them to subscribe to digital journalism (Behre et al. 2023).

Wellbrock and Buschow (2020) present the first empirical findings on the effects of cross-publisher offerings in digital journalism. Their study shows the multiplication of digital journalism revenues compared to market data at the time and serves as a basis for the extension of the analysis of bundling effects, although their work is limited by a lack of comparable individual products, a limited sample size and thus no possibility to analyze the effects in different population groups. These limitations prevent a more in-depth analysis. In order to overcome these limitations and to gain a more comprehensive and robust understanding of cross-publisher effects, two large surveys are conducted using three different methods and a total of 8173 respondents.

Erbrich et al. (2024) apply a choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC). The study finds high effects on subscription sales across different demographic groups. However, this leads to a rather small increase in market revenue in the digital market, while the revenue in the overall German market, which includes print products, remains stable. Although the study shows that different segments of the population may be inclined to subscribe to a comprehensive bundle, potentially leading to significant market expansion, the lower platform price only partially compensates for the loss of individual subscriptions in the current market situation.

In contrast to this study, the aim of this paper is to compare the revenues of bundled and individual offers in more detail. Furthermore, while the analysis of Erbrich et al. (2024) only considers a large, centralized bundle, this study extends the analysis to decentralized and smaller offerings, such as a combination of only national and regional content.

Examples of Cross-Publisher Bundled Offerings

The New York Times has recognized consumers’ preferences and offers an “all inclusive” bundle. Current market data and the reported financial figures of (The New York Times 2023) also show the appeal of offering subscriptions for multi-products. For example, in the second quarter of 2023, more than half of the newly acquired subscribers opted for the all-access bundle. Following this success, the news outlet has extended its lead position with 36 percent of the total US digital subscribers, ahead of both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (Newman et al. 2023).

The Norwegian media company Schibsted has launched a bundled product, “Full tilgang”, similar to the NYT offering. Schibsted combines news and entertainment in one package, giving users access to a wide range of local and national newspapers, tabloids, podcasts and magazines (Newman 2024; Piechota 2023). Recent market evidence shows that this bundled offering is a consistent driver of subscription growth (Schibsted 2024). Norway’s Amedia has also reported positive results from its +Alt subscription model, which bundles access to its various local newspapers. After implementing this shared subscription model across 73 local newspapers for one year, each newspaper increased its revenue (Logsdon et al. 2021).

In Germany, some small internal bundling strategies are evident, such as the combined digital subscription offered by Spiegel, Manager Magazine and Harvard Business Manager, albeit at a relatively high monthly price of EUR 34.99. This product was introduced by Spiegel in response to subscriber demand for a varied bundle including both news and business coverage (Spiegel Gruppe 2023).

In general, bundling can effectively increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) by broadening the subscription base through increased perceived value, reducing churn, increasing cost-efficiency and providing greater opportunities for cross-selling (Piechota 2024).

External cross-publisher services such as Apple News+ have relatively high usage rates in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. In the US, 18 percent of subscribers have opted for Apple News+, with a particularly high adoption rate among younger audiences—30 percent of subscribers under the age of 35 have opted for the service (Newman et al. 2023; Newman and Robertson 2023). Apple News+ is not yet available in Europe. In contrast to the United States, the availability of similar, mainly external offerings in Germany has remained limited and stable in recent years (Buschow et al. 2023). This is the case even though studies such as Behre et al. (2023) have confirmed the attractiveness of cross-publisher offerings for Germany as well.

Platforms that provide access to diverse text-based German journalistic content include, for example, Readly and Pressreader. These services offer a comprehensive range of e-papers, but do not provide access to premium content. Furthermore, their usage rates in Germany are relatively low, with only two percent of German news consumers using Readly, for example (Behre et al. 2023).

A recent development aimed at better accommodating subscriber preferences is the creation of “alles.plus”, a joint platform from Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This platform allows users to subscribe to additional digital newspapers at a reduced rate, enabling combinations such as regional and national newspaper subscriptions (Ernst 2024). According to Spiegel’s managing director, internal surveys have repeatedly shown that subscribers desire access to regional news besides the Spiegel digital subscription.

The platform itself does not sell subscriptions or discounted combinations of subscriptions. Instead, it provides technically reliable voucher codes between media companies to facilitate the offering of discounts.

A different journalistic platform is the German start-up Informed. It bundles premium content from international publishers such as the New York Times, the Financial Times and the Economist, but has Spiegel as the only German publication in its offering (Informed 2022). The platform also allows users to consume curated content based on their preferences and interests by using AI technology.

3. Methodology

This study involved 6631 participants, selected to reflect the characteristics of the German online population based on their online activity over the previous three months. The market research company respondi used its actively managed online access panel to recruit participants in March 2022. A quota sampling approach, a non-probability strategy, was used to achieve a sample representative of the German online population. It covered key demographics such as age, gender, formal education, net household income and geographical region. The participants in our survey ranged in age from 14 to 69, and the resulting sample was expected to closely match data obtained using probability sampling methods (Fowler 2002). A number of attributes were selected that affect consumers’ willingness to pay: the price per month, format, bundle size and access (see

Table 1. Surveyed attributes.

Attribute	Level
Format	Website App e-paper Website + app + e-paper
Bundle size Price Access	Individual national/regional offering Bundled national/regional offering EUR 4.95–29.95 Centralized Decentralized

).

Price is considered the most important attribute influencing willingness to pay for journalism. For GGM, a price scale was chosen that ranged from EUR 4.95 to 29.95 per month, divided into five levels. These price scales are based on the 2021 market data for Germany (Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger 2022).

The format attribute describes the medium through which content is delivered to users. In a conjoint analysis by Berger et al. (2015), it was the second most important attribute when deciding to subscribe to a news outlet. It distinguishes between print, websites, apps and e-papers as potential formats (attribute levels). e-papers were included in the survey because they account for a high proportion of the total subscriptions (Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger 2022).

“Bundle size” distinguishes between individual products and bundles. One of the variants considered is a comprehensive bundle that gives users access to text-based content from a range of national and regional publishers (Wellbrock 2020a). Other product variants include bundles that present content from all regional or national publishers or a combination of a single regional and national title, allowing us to determine whether smaller bundles also have a positive impact on user perceptions. Current research shows that large bundles that provide access to multiple publishers can increase the willingness to pay for digital journalism, especially among younger audiences (Behre et al. 2023; Borchgrevink-Brækhus and Moe 2023).

The term “access” refers to the two ways—centralized and decentralized—in which content can be accessed by users. Centralized access involves the delivery of content through a single platform. A decentralized approach allows users to bypass publishers’ paywalls with a single sign-on solution. It could be a key feature for publishers as it is less costly than a centralized approach, while the content remains in the publisher’s branded environment (Wellbrock 2020a).

Eleven different groups were randomly selected and presented with various journalistic individual and hypothetical cross-publisher bundled products in text form and asked about their willingness to pay for these products. In both methods, the resulting demand curves at certain price points could be considered as the maximum potential subscription sales on average in the total population. For example, a national single offering was presented in the following form:

A monthly subscription to a digital paid service of a German national daily or weekly newspaper or news magazine. You can access the content of the newspaper or news magazine via the website. Examples of such paid offers are SPIEGEL+ (Der SPIEGEL), SZ Plus (Süddeutsche Zeitung), F+ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and WELTplus (WELT).

The national bundle consisted of a comprehensive and hypothetical subscription for national publishers, allowing the plus content of, for example, Welt, Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to be consumed at one price on their respective websites (“decentralized design”). These publishers were chosen as exemplary publishers from different political orientations in order to be able to examine the bundling effects in the best possible way. For the sake of simplicity, hypothetical access to all German publishers was investigated:

A single monthly subscription with access to the paid-for digital content of all German national daily and weekly newspapers and news magazines. The content can be accessed via the newspaper and magazine websites. Examples of such paid content that you can then access are SPIEGEL+ (Der SPIEGEL), SZ Plus (Süddeutsche Zeitung), F+ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and WELTplus (WELT).

The regional bundle was presented as an opportunity to subscribe to different regional publishers at one price. Further variations are presented in the Appendix A.

The two methods chosen for this study, the Gabor–Granger method and Price Sensitivity Meter, are widely recognized and commonly used techniques in the field of marketing research (Lipovetsky et al. 2011). Using the Gabor and Granger (1979) method, it is possible to calculate demand curves for certain products, showing the percentage of respondents who would subscribe to the product at different price points and the maximum prices that they are willing to pay.

The Gabor–Granger method (GGM) has become a standard method for the determination of the highest product prices that respondents are willing to pay. It is routinely used to assess price points prior to the introduction of new products (Lipovetsky et al. 2011).

In this study, all participants were randomly assigned to one of six pre-defined price points (EUR 4.95, 9.95, 14.95, 19.95, 24.95 or 29.95) for one of eleven products surveyed. They were then asked to rate their likelihood of subscribing to the product monthly using a scale of 1 (“very unlikely”) to 5 (“very likely”). If respondents chose 1 or 2, they were then presented with a lower price point. Conversely, those who chose 3 to 5 were presented with a higher price point. The survey was completed once the price point that generated the highest individual likelihood of purchase had been determined.

The ordinal responses (scale scores) were then converted into subscription probabilities, where a score of 1 corresponded to a probability of 0 percent and 5 corresponded to a purchase probability of 70 percent (2 = 10 percent; 3 = 30 percent; 4 = 50 percent). This conversion allowed us to generate aggregated subscription probabilities for the different price points, which in turn were used to estimate the demand and revenue potential curves.

Van Westendorp’s (1976) Price Sensitivity Meter, combined with Newton et al.’s (1993) extension, has been established as a quantitative market research method for the determination of acceptable price ranges and is an effective tool for the measurement of consumers’ willingness to pay, especially for relatively new products (Kloss and Kunter 2016; Lipovetsky et al. 2011). It is a survey-based method used to measure how sensitive consumers are to price changes (Wilczynski and Johnston 2023).

Unlike the GGM, respondents choose the prices themselves in the framework of the PSM. It is initially based on the following questions, which were also asked of the participants of this study.

-

At what monthly subscription price do you still consider this product to be cheap/a bargain (“cheap”)?

-

At what monthly subscription price do you consider this product to be so cheap that you seriously doubt its quality and consequently do not buy it (“too cheap”)?

-

At what monthly subscription price would you describe this product as expensive, but still consider buying it (“expensive”)?

-

At what monthly subscription price would you describe this product as too expensive and no longer consider buying it (“too expensive”)?

After each question about “cheap” and “expensive” price points, respondents were asked about their likelihood of subscribing: “How likely is it that you would subscribe to the product at the monthly subscription price you just mentioned?” Respondents rated their likelihood on a scale from 1 (“very unlikely”) to 5 (“very likely”). These scale ratings were then converted into purchase probabilities, with 1 corresponding to a 0 percent likelihood and 5 corresponding to a 70 percent likelihood of purchase (2 = 10 percent; 3 = 30 percent; 4 = 50 percent), following the standard conventions of this methodology. This approach is based on the general methodology of Newton et al. (1993), who suggest extending the classical method to obtain demand and sales potential curves. This approach was implemented primarily to establish validated optimal price points for different products and to facilitate better comparability with the Gabor–Granger method. The probability queries were ordinally scaled for both methods.

Both methods measure WTP through direct questioning (Kloss and Kunter 2016; Miller et al. 2011). Respondents are asked to state specific price points that they are willing to pay with respect to their purchase intentions at different price levels (O’Brien et al. 2020). These methods combine ordinal queries on “paying intent” with general willingness to pay (WTP) queries, facilitating the estimation of subscription probabilities. As a result, this approach allows for the identification of the revenue-maximizing price point through a metric query.

The data collected were aggregated and used to estimate the sales potential and demand curves based on the “expensive” and “favorable” price points. In contrast, the method assumed zero purchase probabilities for the “too expensive” and “too cheap” price points. Once the data had been consolidated into demand curves, it was possible to derive average purchase shares at each price point, as is typical in this methodology. This share is assumed to represent the potential share of buyers within the population (Puliyel and Ravi 1990) and thus the number of people who would subscribe to the specific product.

4. Empirical Results

Across the sample, 28 percent stated that they used (free) online news publishers such as Bild and Spiegel at least every day, while 16 percent stated that they used them several times a week.

In addition, respondents were asked about their likelihood of subscribing to different journalistic products, such as bundles and individual products. Possible responses were ranked from 1 (very unlikely) to 5 (very likely). It was found that only 10 percent said that they were likely or very likely to pay, while a staggering 70 percent said that they were unlikely or very unlikely to subscribe.

Only 6 percent said that they had a digital journalism subscription; this suggests significant untapped potential to increase subscription sales. Recent research (Behre et al. 2023) suggests that this gap is also due to consumers’ desire for products that offer access to content from multiple publishers, a feature that is not yet sufficiently available in the current German market.

Furthermore, current subscribers to regional and national plus offerings have a median budget of nearly EUR 8, while more than 25 percent pay less than EUR 5. Respondents were also asked about their intentions to use journalistic products. While 27% stated that they would potentially use a national single offer, 36% stated that they would at least potentially use a hypothetical national bundle. These percentages are likely to be higher than the actual demand, as a significant proportion of people assume that the products are at least freemium.

In general, the variable paying intent has a median value of 1 (very unlikely) for the individual national, regional product and 2 (unlikely) for the bundled national, regional product.

Figure 1 shows the demand and revenue potential curves derived from applying the Gabor–Granger method to a national bundle and individual national offering. The analysis reveals that a bundled model providing access to multiple news websites (decentralized design) yields approximately 20 percent higher revenues compared to a single solution. In the framework of the GGM, the idea is that bundling these products comprehensively leads to advantages in publishers’ revenues compared to the situation wherein all products are just sold individually. The bundled offering exhibits maximum revenue potential of nearly EUR 113 million, while the individual offering reaches nearly EUR 92 million.

The optimal price for the bundle is determined to be EUR 14.95, with an estimated 11 percent of the sample expressing willingness to subscribe. In contrast, the single product is priced at EUR 9.95 and attracts approximately 14 percent of the sample to subscribe. Certainly, this higher value is due to the lower optimal price point for the single product. The exact maximum revenue potential of the national bundle compared to the single product is also shown in

Table 2. Comparative analysis of monthly revenues of bundled products and individual products.

	Regional Individual Product (Website)	Regional Bundle (Websites, Decentralized)
GGM	EUR 93.6 million (EUR 9.95)	EUR 111 million (EUR 19.95)
PSM-NMS	EUR 74.7 million (EUR 18)	EUR 91.9 million (EUR 20)
Change in revenues		+19% to +23%
	National Individual Product (Website)	National Bundle (Websites, Decentralized)
GGM	EUR 92.3 million (EUR 9.95)	EUR 113 million (EUR 14.95)
PSM-NMS	EUR 61.2 million (EUR 10)	EUR 77 million (EUR 24)
Change in revenues		+22% to +26%

. In addition, the table shows the revenue potential suggested by PSM-NMS.

Figure 2 illustrates the demand and revenue potential curves generated using the Gabor–Granger method for both a regional bundle and individual regional offerings. The analysis indicates that a bundled model, which provides access to multiple news websites (a decentralized design), results in approximately 20 percent higher revenues compared to a single-site offering. According to the Gabor–Granger method, bundling these products together offers significant revenue advantages for publishers over selling each product individually. Specifically, the bundled offering has a maximum revenue potential of nearly EUR 111 million, whereas the individual offerings reach nearly EUR 94 million. 8 percent of respondents would subscribe to the bundle and 14 percent to the single offering.

Table 2 compares the maximum revenues of decentralized bundled offers with those of individual offers. The optimal prices are shown in parentheses. Bundling web-based digital subscriptions across regions leads to a 20 percent increase in revenue compared to selling the same newspapers individually. Specifically, the estimated maximum revenue for a single regional product is approximately EUR 94 million (GGM) and EUR 75 million (PSM-NMS) per month. By offering a regional bundle, publishers can achieve maximum revenue potential of EUR 111 million (GGM) and EUR 92 million (PSM-NMS) per month.

Aggregating German national content results in a maximum revenue increase of 26 percent if the PSM method is conducted. The individual national offering has maximum revenue potential of nearly EUR 61 million, while a hypothetical national bundle reaches the maximum revenue of EUR 77 million.

The optimal prices for a single product at the regional level range from EUR 9.95 to 18, with the optimal price for a regional bundle being around EUR 20. Both approaches also suggest that the optimal price for a national single product is around EUR 10.

Furthermore, the optimal price range for a national product bundle is determined to be between EUR 12 and 24 (see Table 2). However, it would probably be more appealing to set a monthly price of EUR 12 as this is almost equal to the revenue potential of the optimal price point at EUR 24, as shown in Figure 3. By adapting the price, the subscription potential could be doubled from 5 to nearly 10 percent of the overall sample.

The revenue analysis of various product bundles, as presented in

Table 3. Comparative presentation of monthly revenues of different product bundles.

Product	National Bundle (n = 489)	Regional and National Bundle (n = 539)	Comprehensive Bundle (n = 1530)
Method/features	Website (decentralized)	Website (decentralized)	Website, app and e-paper (centralized)
GGM	EUR 113 million (EUR 14.95)	EUR 125.9 million (EUR 14.95)	EUR 144.3 million (EUR 14.95)
PSM-NMS	EUR 76.2 million (EUR 24)	EUR 96.5 million (EUR 15)	EUR 104.8 million (EUR 19)
Change in revenues compared to the previous bundle		+11%	+15%
		+27%	+9%

, indicates that incorporating regional content into a national bundle boosts the revenue potential. This is evidenced by an increase of between 11 and 27 percent. While a national bundle could lead to the maximum revenue of EUR 113 million (EUR 76 million), a regional and national bundle could enhance the revenue to EUR 126 million (EUR 97 million). A shift from the decentralized national and regional bundle to a centralized one including regional content results in an increase of 9 to 15 percent. This comprehensive bundle could, at most, generate revenue of EUR 144 million (EUR 105 million). The model, usually referred to as “Spotify for News”, provides users with access to a diverse array of regional and national plus content, complemented by e-papers, accessible through a single website and app. It has the highest revenue potential among all the digital products surveyed but shows rather small increases in revenue compared to a decentralized approach.

By controlling for income and journalistic media usage within the GGM framework, it is possible to isolate the effect of the cross-publisher national bundle on revenue compared to individual products and in relation to the overall sample. The analysis reveals that, at certain optimal price points, and if other variables are held constant, both bundles generate significantly higher revenues among respondents with higher income and media usage compared to individual offerings. In addition, the revenue difference exceeds the effect in the overall sample. Further descriptive numbers are presented in the Appendix A.

5. Discussion

In summary, the results highlight the potential for publishers to increase their revenues through bundling strategies. The most attractive is the combination of regional and national content. It seems to best match consumer preferences and reduce differences in consumer willingness to pay (Bakos and Brynjolfsson 1999; Venkatesh and Kamakura 2003). Of particular note is the substantial revenue increase observed in decentralized bundles, where the content remains within the publisher’s branded environment. These findings are particularly consistent with the success of “all-inclusive” bundles, such as those offered by Schibsted.

A regional bundle also has the potential to increase publishers’ revenues in Germany. Such products could be attractive to people who have moved to different cities and wish to follow the coverage where they have lived, as exemplified by Amedia’s Alt+ model (Veseling 2023). Given the digital challenges faced by many regional publishers, bundling may be a solution for these publishers to pool their resources and increase their subscription sales. However, the findings do not strongly support the adoption of a centralized “Spotify for Journalism” model. This is primarily due to the relatively small revenue differences (9 to 15 percent) between a decentralized and centralized bundle (see Table 3), especially when considering the significant infrastructure costs associated with a centralized platform (Lobigs 2021). The type of access (decentralized vs. centralized) does not appear to be a significant factor for respondents in their subscription decisions.

Additionally, decentralized journalistic bundles, with their lower cost structure, do not depend on financial subsidies from media policy in contrast to hypothetical high-cost centralized platforms, which is particularly beneficial given the challenges in reaching political consensus on direct funding measures in Germany. However, to enhance the appeal for publishers to collaborate on larger centralized bundles such as “Spotify for Journalism” approaches, financial support through media policy is probably the only way to increase incentives. For instance, transformation funding via an innovation fund could directly invest in the development of such collaborative offerings (Wellbrock et al. 2023). Future research could explore this approach in greater depth.

Currently, large German media companies lack the incentive to enter into bundling agreements with unaffiliated publishers, apart from the “alles.plus” offering, which is also a small first step. This is mainly due to the relative success of their individual subscription-focused strategies (Newman and Robertson 2023) and their potential expectation to survive as one of the last players (Lobigs 2021). Therefore, publishers are unlikely to promote their paying customers in a joint subscription with their direct competitors (Wellbrock 2020b). One reason is that revenue sharing and pricing would have to be negotiated, which could be difficult.

The issue of revenue sharing is a major challenge in bundled content strategies because individual contributions are not easily quantifiable (Shiller and Waldfogel 2013). To address this, the authors suggest using the Shapley value from cooperative game theory. This method could ensure that each publisher receives a share of the total revenue proportional to their specific contribution. This allocation could be determined based on various metrics, such as the number of articles read by consumers, the traffic or exposure that each publisher brings to the bundle or the incremental subscription revenue attributable to their content. Geographic considerations could also be taken into account; for example, publishers serving under-represented areas could receive additional compensation to recognize their unique contributions to the diversity and reach of the bundle.

Partnerships with explicitly journalistic platforms such as Informed could align more closely with consumer preferences and enhance the breadth and depth of content offerings. Such collaborations have the potential to foster a robust journalism media system within a platformed world. By pooling their resources, expertise and content, publishers can offer more comprehensive and diverse offerings to their audiences, thereby enriching the overall media landscape.

As many publishers, especially abroad from Germany, are still in the early stages of testing their bundles, there is often a lack of positive user experiences (Piechota 2024). Consequently, some subscribers, who prefer a seamless experience, have chosen to cancel their subscriptions because they cannot find the content that they are looking for. Those who currently subscribe to individual publications worry that a bundled option will limit their access to a wide range of content, leaving them worse off than if they had maintained a single subscription (Buschow and Wellbrock 2022). Respondents also fear that such bundles may primarily offer content that is already available for free and of inferior quality.

The study of Buschow and Wellbrock (2022) also highlights the importance of offering curated and personalized content. Younger audiences in particular prefer customizable options to pre-packaged bundles, favoring features such as personalized news feeds and the ability to curate their own content (Borchgrevink-Brækhus and Moe 2023; Kammer et al. 2015). Among non-paying users and those who have cancelled their subscriptions are concerns about being overwhelmed by uncurated content in comprehensive journalistic bundles. Most current bundles lack such features. However, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) models could potentially address this issue, as they could enable the creation of bundles that are nearly perfectly aligned with subscribers’ preferences and interests (Piechota 2024).

Publishers that offer such models should keep these considerations in mind.

Initially, there is a risk of overestimating the revenue potential of cross-publisher bundles due to the methodology used (Breidert et al. 2006; Lipovetsky et al. 2011). Compared to market data (pv digest 2022), the overall revenue of the surveyed individual offerings is substantially higher. Furthermore, the study does not look at the overall market impact, making it difficult to predict how these bundles might affect the broader market dynamics. Only large publishers such as Welt, Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were surveyed for national products. There is a lack of smaller start-ups that offer rather niche content. Furthermore, as the examples given were entirely hypothetical and such products are not currently available, the consumers may have struggled to accurately imagine the product.

Another limitation of the survey is its focus on only text-based products. Apart from these, formats such as short videos are becoming increasingly important, especially if the consumption behavior of young people is considered (Newman et al. 2023). The decision to mainly focus this survey on text-based content was driven by already existing bundled models and the fact that the current, private journalistic publishers mainly produce this form of content in Germany.

Lastly, the application of these methods did not allow us to determine the optimal number of bundled offerings. Future research could explore this, extending the analysis of Erbrich et al. (2024), which has also shown that a combination of one regional and one national newspaper is appealing for consumers.

6. Conclusions

The introduction of cross-publisher subscription bundles by major players such as the New York Times, Apple and Schibsted marks a significant shift in the way in which news and information are consumed. This study addresses a critical gap in journalism and media research by examining the impact of these bundles on publisher revenues, particularly in the relatively understudied German market. Using two robust methodological approaches, the Gabor–Granger method and the Price Sensitivity Meter with the Newton–Miller–Smith extension, this study shows that cross-publisher bundles can indeed generate higher revenues compared to individual offerings.

The results indicate that bundled offers, whether internally within a single publisher or through external collaborations, increase the revenue potential. However, the revenue differences between decentralized and centralized bundles are relatively modest, suggesting limited support for a centralized “Spotify for Journalism” model due to high infrastructure costs. Instead, the results favor decentralized bundling, where content remains within publishers’ branded environments, preserving their individual identities and reducing costs.

While the study underscores the potential of bundling strategies to drive revenue, it also highlights the unique challenges and opportunities in the German market. Bundling is just one strategy to develop models that better match with consumers’ preferences and expectations. Major German publishers, experiencing success with individual subscription models, show reluctance towards extensive collaboration with unaffiliated publishers. Instead, they might adopt a strategy similar to that of the New York Times and Schibsted, focusing on the internal bundling of their own titles. However, this study also provides evidence for bundling strategies with external publishers. To maximize the appeal of these bundles, publishers must address consumer concerns about content curation, personalization and quality. Bundles that offer customizable options and high-quality, exclusive content are likely to be more successful in attracting and retaining subscribers.