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. This study aims to fill this gap by employing two different methodological approaches: the Gabor–Granger method and the Price Sensitivity Meter, enhanced by the Newton–Miller–Smith extension. It examines the willingness of a large sample (n = 6631) of the German online population to subscribe to cross-publisher offers. In contrast to other European media markets, cross-publisher bundling strategies are still in their infancy in Germany. 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.