How big is the market for paid content from regional publishers? A rule of thumb

When I observe things and analyze a lot of data, I sometimes come up with a rule of thumb. I have a similar rule of thumb for the question: How big is the market for premium offerings?

For local and regional providers, it’s at least one-thirtieth of the people living in my coverage area. How did I come to this conclusion?

In my previous job at NOZ Digital, I had the privilege of my team and I conducting and analyzing many in-depth interviews with many people. In the end, there were about 150. One result: For traditional (local) journalism, people from certain socio-demographic groups are easily reachable without much effort.

These groups make up about a third of the population nationwide. (For experts: They are parts of Sinus-Milieus, Nostalgic-Bourgeois, Adaptive-Pragmatic, and Postmaterial.)

Since I know that about 13 percent of them are children, others struggle with the German language, and some prefer print or e-paper, and a pretty large group, despite their "right" milieu affiliation, won’t subscribe, I say: one in ten of them. So, multiplying, that’s one-thirtieth.

As I said: A rule of thumb, but one that gives a good idea of the scale of what is achievable without much effort. Now, anyone working in the regional/local sector can quickly calculate what this means for their own coverage area. And almost always, the result will be: there’s a lot of potential!

What does this mean for us? First of all, it’s encouraging that the industry can leave the current sideways movement with much momentum. It also means, from my point of view: We need to strengthen our sales abilities and continue to train our conversion muscles. Despite the retention discussion currently happening in the industry: We are still in a growth phase.

Joachim Dreykluft is Head of Data & AI Strategies at Upscore.