Newsquest has reached 100,000 paid digital subscribers four years after first launching a soft paywall across most of its biggest regional news websites.
The publisher of titles including the Brighton Argus, South Wales Argus, Oxford Mail and Eastern Daily Press said it recorded 101,109 paying digital subscribers last week.
Newsquest said it simultaneously reached a record total 187 million page views in August, up 13% year on year.
Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker said: “The demand for digital subscriptions, which has now surpassed 100,000 and continues to grow at a pace, has exceeded our expectations.
“At the same time, we’re also continuing to grow our overall digital audience, with 57.5 million visitors to the Newsquest sites in August reading a record number of articles.
“The data further underlines the phenomenal demand for trusted local news and the power of our local platforms which now typically reach more than 75% of local people each month.”
Newsquest rolled out metered paywalls for the websites of all of its daily newspapers in 2020 after trying the strategy out first on sites including the Northern Echo and The Herald.
Currently visitors to most of its websites can read up to 30 articles per month without paying, although some stories are for subscribers only. Digital subscriptions, which typically cost £4.99 per month, give full access to the website, fewer ads and access to an e-edition of the print newspaper. Some of the biggest websites also provide subscriber-only newsletters.
In November last year Faure Walker told Press Gazette that Newsquest was on 78,000 paying online subscribers, meaning it has grown the total by 30% in nine months.
Newsquest said digital subscriptions now bring in more than £500,000 per month.
Faure Walker said in November: “I don’t think it’s going to be the main revenue stream for us… but it’s an important part of the mix.”
The new milestone means Newsquest is eligible to join the next update of Press Gazette’s 100k Club of English-speaking news publishers with at least 100,000 digital subscribers. Its parent company Gannett is already represented, with two million digital-only subscriptions.
Overall Newsquest said its overall online traffic in 2024 so far, between January and August, is up 9% year-on-year after a year of 12.5% like-for-like growth in 2023.
Press Gazette analysis of Ipsos iris data for July suggested Newsquest was the best-performing big-three UK regional publisher that month with average monthly audience growth of 60% and audience minutes up 44% on average across the sites for which we received data.
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