Economist unbundles tablet edition from print

Nat Ives of Advertising Age reports about how The Economist has unbundled its print edition from its tablet edition and talked to Michael Brunt, senior vice president and head of circulation for the Americas and global head of marketing at Economist Digital, about the change.

Here is an excerpt:

Ad Age: Why have you been bundling your print and tablet subscriptions together these past two years?

Mr. Brunt: I think it was really about gauging demand for our content in a digital format. So we launched our apps and we wanted our current readers to be able to access those and gauge the appeal they have and see how much our subscribers would value them.

Ad Age: So why unbundle print and digital now?

Mr. Brunt: Over the last couple of years, we have found that increasing numbers of people were paying for digital-only and that there was genuine demand for both. A substantial number of print subscribers had activated access to our digital content. It demonstrated demand for people reading our content in both print and in digital.

Our subscribers really value our content, and we wanted to create a pricing structure that made sense for the way that people wanted to buy our subscription. People think it’s reasonable to pay a little more for both and to give them a choice for a lower cost if they just want print or they just want digital.

Read more here.