Data shows players spend more than 12 times as long on some puzzles as they do on an average news article, encouraging Nine to use them to help drive premium subscription bundles.
In an INMA ‘satisfying audiences’ blog, Mex Cooper, head of audience strategy for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and WAToday, says findings have encouraged the publisher to develop a new puzzle.
“Wordle’s worldwide success showed the inarguable ability of puzzles and games to attract audiences and build daily habits,” she says. “This power has been evident since newspapers began printing crosswords more than 110 years ago.”
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have long known the value of their own offerings – including cryptic crosswords, quizzes and Sudoku – to the mastheads’ print subscribers. “Factual errors in news stories might prompt legal concerns, but botching a crossword clue has always been the surest way to flood our feedback channels,” she says.
Even for people actively avoiding the news, puzzles remain a draw for media companies.
Cooper says when the Nine publications introduced a premium digital subscription tier, interactive online crosswords and Sudoku were obvious inclusions. “Bundling these puzzles with a digital replica of the printed newspaper enticed readers to pay more.
“Our data shows subscribers who consume puzzles visit us more frequently and spend longer with us when they do. They are also less likely to cancel their subscriptions; premium Sydney Morning Herald digital subscribers who have a habit of playing Sudoku and crosswords are between 73-75 per cent less likely to churn than those who don’t,” she says.
“Subscribers have told us they play our games to stay mentally fit, to challenge themselves, because it’s a daily habit, for the satisfaction of completing them, to improve their logical thinking, and to have fun.”
This last reason is increasingly important when 39 per cent of people report actively avoiding the news, and the same proportion cite news fatigue, according to the 2024 Digital News Report. Puzzles and games offer a way for news publishers to meet user needs that news reporting may not always fulfill.
“We knew from tightening our paywalls that Target Time and our daily quiz, which appeared together, were among our most effective subscription converters,” says Melbourne-based Mex Cooper (pictured). “This was true even though the digital version of Target Time was merely a static screenshot of the printed product, offering a poor user experience.
“To further drive subscribers to upgrade, we decided to transform Target Time into an exciting interactive experience that could be bundled into our premium tier.
Features of Target Time have been enhanced over time, making it even more appealing to players.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age product and design team set to work revamping Target Time with features including:
-progress tracking across graded levels (average, good, excellent, and perfect);
-timers, pause options, and answer reveals; and
-celebratory animations for milestones, such as finding a nine-letter word. For many players, this is the actual goal of the game.
“Critically, unlike our existing online puzzles, the relaunched Target Time included data tracking so we could view key metrics in a dashboard. These key metrics include unique players, average time spent on a game, average points scored, and average games per user.
“We also tracked which features players used most and the most common achievement levels reached (unsurprisingly, it’s ‘average’).”
The data shows players spend more than 12 times as long on Target Time as they do on an average news article. It also underscored the need for a comprehensive puzzles dashboard to better understand their impact on subscription journeys and to include data for all our existing puzzles.
As well as these updates, the product and design team is exploring features like personal statistics tracking and community-building tools. “We aim to make puzzles a shared experience between readers, thereby creating a deeper connection with our mastheads and strengthening retention.
“We’re also developing a new puzzle to further bolster our offer. Together with our newly launched Good Food app, these initiatives give our audience more reasons not just to subscribe, but to choose our premium experience.”