GNI Subscriptions Lab expands to Europe to help publishers grow revenue
The news industry continues to face tough challenges as the way people find and access information changes. At the same time, we’re seeing promising results from publishers who are developing new business models and ways of working to support high quality journalism in the digital age. Our Google News Initiative is designed to support this innovation and help journalism thrive.
As part of this, we’re hosting our second Google News Initiative Summit in Amsterdam this week which brings together hundreds of publishers, news executives, editors and academics from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to discuss the latest opportunities and challenges for the news industry. We’ll talk about the latest products and innovations, as well as important topics like the role of machine learning in publishing and new ways of growing reader revenue.
One of the topics we hear a lot about is which products or technologies can help publishers grow revenue from their digital content. While many large publishers have seen great success from digital subscriptions, we are doing more to ensure smaller and local news publishers have the same opportunity to find out what works for their content.
At this week’s event, we’ll announce the expansion of our GNI Subscriptions Labs program to Europe, building on the success of similar Labs in North America and Latin America. The European Lab has been developed in partnership with FT Strategies and the International News Media Association (INMA) and is designed to help European publishers strengthen digital subscriptions capabilities and grow reader revenue. The nine-month program includes in-person consultancy and coaching to help publishers understand, experiment and optimise their subscription models. Applications open today and the experience and learnings gained from the GNI Subscriptions Lab will be shared with publishers around the world to help them implement their own digital subscription strategies.
The GNI Subscriptions Lab in Europe is one of several efforts to help publishers' find new ways to grow revenue from their digital content. We also work with many European publishers on products like Subscribe with Google which creates a simple way for readers to subscribe to news publications and maintain access everywhere. Groupe Le Monde in France and Il Fatto Quotidiano in Italy announced their implementations just this month.
Another key topic at the event is how to equip publishers and journalists with the latest information and insights on digital news. In the-last five years, we've trained 370,000 journalists in Europe through the Google News Initiative and this year we'll host three major training summits with the European Journalism Centre (EJC). Together with the EJC we'll also support over 40 news organizations to host a journalism student for the summer months.
Alongside this, we’ve renewed our support of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for an additional three years. This is an independent report which looks at changing reader behaviour around the world, providing important insights to publishers. Our partnership enables the Reuters Institute to cover more countries in the report, provide further in-depth analysis of developments in news and media, and support fellowships for mid-career journalists. This year, the partnership will also provide off-site leadership development programs for senior editors and media executives.
Google is committed to collaborating with publishers on their digital strategies and is investing more into programs and partnerships across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We look forward to an exciting event of discussions, insights and ideas from publishers across the region.
