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Sanoma

Sanoma steps up account personalization

Finnish media brand boosts user engagement with My News Service features.

Facing up to account misuse

As one of Finland’s largest media companies, Sanoma Media Finland reaches nearly every household with the country’s leading daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, as well as a number of regional papers, radio and TV stations, online news sites, and magazines. Based on analysis conducted in 2020, however, they discovered that account misuse was rampant, with some subscribers sharing their login credentials outside their households. Not only was this affecting Sanoma’s bottom line; unauthorized account activity was resulting in some user profiles displaying content that didn't align with user interests, diminishing the personalized user experience (UX) that Sanoma strives for.

“We knew that some digital publishers take a hard line in solving the account misuse issue by restricting accounts, but this can have adverse short-term effects since the users might just churn,” Sanoma Media Finland’s Head of Data Valtteri Vartiainen explains. Instead, Sanoma wanted to take a softer approach, developing features to make the UX more personalized. When users created their own personalized experience, they hypothesized that personalization would increase user engagement and boost subscriber retention, and – ultimately – decrease account misuse.

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“The pace of innovation is accelerating quite a bit, so what we do is increasingly about continuous learning. Working with GNI has helped us to learn and experiment faster so we can continue our learning journey at a fast pace”
Petteri Putkiranta
Vice President of News & Feature media, Sanoma Media Finland

Developing personalized news features

Having collaborated with the Google News partnerships team since 2018, Sanoma turned to the Google News Initiative (GNI) in 2023 to help them launch a set of personalization features called My News Service. The features included a personalized profile menu and account page for each user, as well as a Year in News feature, which Vartiainen compares to Spotify’s annual user wrapup. “My News Service looks at subscriber usage and purchase data, processes it, and then provides insightful ways to increase user engagement and retention,” he says.

In the early stages of development, GNI reviewed Sanoma’s proposal and provided feedback on planned features, and they continued to support Sanoma throughout the project with monthly reviews. “It’s been really efficient,” Sanoma Media Finland’s Vice President of Digital Development and Customer Experience, Timo Rinne says of the partnership. “We’ve learned a lot, and hopefully, we’ve also given Google some nice examples of how to solve this particular problem.”

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Screenshot of the “Year in News” feature

Keeping pace with innovation

With My News Service now live, Sanoma has seen an increase in engagement, particularly with their Year in News feature, which has been viewed by 120,000 unique subscribers and rated 4.8 out of 5 in terms of user satisfaction. The new user flow has also driven newsletter subscriptions up by four percent. “The number of new subscribers should increase as a side effect,” says Vartiainen. “We figure that should happen gradually since existing subscribers are happy with the service and may be recommending it to other users.”

As Sanoma continues to develop personalized features, they are planning future collaborations with GNI, particularly in the area of conversion optimization. “The pace of innovation is accelerating quite a bit, so what we do is increasingly about continuous learning,” says Sanoma Media Finland’s President of News & Feature media, Petteri Putkiranta. “Working with GNI has helped us to learn and experiment faster so we can continue our learning journey at a fast pace.

Google News Initiative — News Ideas

News publishers are innovating to find new ways to engage their audiences. From digital distribution and subscriptions to real-time analytics and AI, to giving readers a voice, they are using technology to reimagine news — with a focus on growing revenues and sophisticated/strong journalism. Their insights might inspire your own next big idea in the news.

About Sanoma

Sanoma Corporation has media business in Finland and education business in twelve European countries. Sanoma Media Finland was established in 1889 with the launch of Finland’s leading daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. As one of the country’s largest multimedia companies, they lead the way in mobile services and online news and include a number of local newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations in their portfolio. Sanoma Learning is the leading education publisher in Europe.

120,000 unique visitors to the Year in News feature
4.8 out of 5 user rating for the Year in News feature
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Sanoma office building in Helsinki
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