Digital publishers celebrate low churn without asking how many paying readers have stopped reading. A subscription that survives because cancelling is forgotten or difficult is not loyalty, and boards should stop counting it as such.
I would rather report a smaller audience I can stand behind than a larger one that needs a footnote. Readers, advertisers and editors all find the footnote eventually.
Across Kronvig Tidende, Kapitalbladet and eleven regional titles; 251,000 in March 2021
Page views read by logged-in readers, 2025
61%
Up from 22 per cent in 2021, after refusal was given equal weight in consent
Colleagues in the data office
74
Data engineering, analytics, privacy engineering and audience research
A publisher's data is only as honest as its smallest count: the subscriber who stopped reading, the visitor who refused tracking, the empty street at four in the morning.
I am the chief data officer of Vesterlund Mediegruppe, a fictional Danish news publisher owned by a commercial foundation. We publish Kronvig Tidende, a national daily, the business daily Kapitalbladet and eleven regional papers in Jutland and on Funen. In 2025 we earned DKK 3.4 billion, 58 per cent of it from subscriptions, and ended the year with 418,000 paying digital subscriptions. I joined in March 2021 as the group's first chief data officer, and I lead 74 people in data engineering, analytics, privacy engineering and audience research from Copenhagen and Aarhus.
My work sits where three groups want different things from the same numbers. Editors want to know what readers value without being told what to write. The commercial side wants audiences it can sell and subscribers it can keep. Readers want journalism without being watched more closely than their subscription requires. I have spent twenty-five years learning how such numbers are produced: weighting survey panels in my first jobs, modelling churn and selling anonymised location insights at a Danish mobile operator, and running personalisation for the streaming player of a Norwegian public-service broadcaster.
The lesson I carry from all of it is that the hardest figures to report honestly are the small ones. A churn model that ignores silent subscribers flatters retention. A consent banner that hides its refusal button inflates the audience. A footfall map built on averages misleads anyone planning for night shifts. Much of what I have done at Vesterlund has made a headline number smaller so that the people relying on it could trust it.
Silent subscribers contacted, not quietly kept
In 2023 we wrote to 41,000 digital subscribers who had opened nothing in ninety days and offered a pause, a cheaper plan or a one-click cancellation. We gave up about DKK 23 million of annual revenue. First-year churn among subscribers who joined afterwards fell from 31 to 24 per cent.
Consent that can be refused on the first screen
In 2022 we gave refusal the same prominence as acceptance on the first layer of a single group consent banner. Acceptance fell from 84 to 63 per cent and programmatic revenue by DKK 41 million a year; logged-in reading rose from 22 to 61 per cent of page views by 2025.
Location insights with a published floor
At Brosund Mobil I set a minimum of fifty devices for any reported location count and refused movement paths and repeat-visit data. We lost a DKK 9 million contract with a shopping-centre owner; municipal and transport customers grew the product to DKK 31 million a year by 2015.
A streaming front page with an editorial share
At Fjellvang Kringkasting we reserved a third of the player's front page for editors' choices. After a year viewing time per visit was 1.5 per cent below a fully personalised design, while weekly users watching at least one news or documentary programme rose from 34 to 47 per cent.
Current focus
I am preparing a paper for our board on how far article recommendations at Kronvig Tidende should be personalised, and on the editorial rules that will bound them. Alongside it, I am replacing page views in our advertising sales with a measure of attentive time that advertisers and our own auditors can check against the same raw logs.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking to leave Vesterlund. With the agreement of our chief executive and board, I would consider one non-executive directorship at a Nordic company outside news publishing that holds a great deal of consumer data: a subscription business, an insurer, an energy retailer or a transport operator. I would join an audit or risk committee and could chair a technology and data committee where a board has one. I can offer about twenty-four days a year, and I accept a few speaking invitations on audience measurement and data ethics.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Nordmål ApSNon-executive director nominated by a shareholder · 2022–present
Formation
Master of Science in StatisticsNørrestrand University · 2001
Board programme for non-executive directors, part timeKalvebod Board School · 2024
Henrik brought the silent-subscriber proposal to us with the revenue loss in the first paragraph and the case for it in the second. He has never asked this board to admire a figure before telling us how it was made, and our employee-elected members trust his papers as fully as the foundation's appointees do.
Inger MørkebergFictional chair of the board, Vesterlund Mediegruppe A/SThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not looking to leave Vesterlund. With the agreement of our chief executive and board, I would consider one non-executive directorship at a Nordic company outside news publishing that holds a great deal of consumer data: a subscription business, an insurer, an energy retailer or a transport operator. I would join an audit or risk committee and could chair a technology and data committee where a board has one. I can offer about twenty-four days a year, and I accept a few speaking invitations on audience measurement and data ethics.
