How Business Insider's AI-based paywall strategy increased conversions by 75%

Overview

Business Insider replaced its editorially-driven freemium paywall with a machine-learning-based smart paywall that decides which content to paywall for each user based on prior reading habits, referral platform, and each content genre's propensity to convert. In testing from December to April, total conversions increased more than 75% versus the control, with 60% of new conversions coming from stories that would never have been paywalled before. Applying AI to the registration wall as well increased registrations by 300%.

The challenge

Business Insider's previous editorially-driven "freemium" paywall only paywalled articles written by a specific subset of journalists tasked with subscriber content, leaving a significant amount of other content on the site that would never prompt readers to pay to access it.

The solution

Business Insider's chief subscriptions officer worked with a vendor to build a smart paywall using machine learning that determines which content individual users are most likely to pay to access, based on their previous reading habits, the platform they arrived from, and each content genre's propensity to convert readers; the same AI-based approach was also applied to the registration wall, replacing a metered approach that triggered after five read articles.

Reported business value

In testing from December to April, total conversions increased more than 75% versus the control, with 60% of new conversions coming from "non-premium" stories that would never have been paywalled under the old model. Applying AI to the registration wall increased registrations by 300%.