AftenpostenSubscription Purchase Prediction

Ciarán Cody-Kenny (Data Scientist, Schibsted Products and Technology)Eivind Hjertholm Fiskerud (Head of Data and Analytics, Schibsted Norway, Subscription Media)

• We built a prediction model to identify news readers likely to buy a subscription

• By measuring news readers' digital engagement on Aftenposten over 4 weeks, we can predict if they will buy a subscription in the next 2 weeks with 78% AUC performance

• Targeted Facebook campaign experiments based on the model showed a 22 % lift in conversions and a 35% reduction in cost per order

Summary

Growing digital subscriptions is a strategic priority for Schibsted’s publishers

Digital subscriptions grow rapidly Schibsted’s publishers have ~500 000 digital subscribers

We built a prediction model to identify the news readers most likely to buy a subscription

Observational period

Subscription convert Y/N?

28 days 14 days

What behavior here makes a user more likely to purchase here?

Behavioral data is a good predictor of purchase, more engaged users are more likely to buy

Logged-in users that …

• have visited recently • read more articles • visit more days • visit from >1 device • visit at weekends • come to Aftenposten from multiple sources

… are more likely to buy a subscription …

The prediction model performs well in ranking users on their likelihood to purchase

The 10% highest scored users bought 51% of subscriptions in the training set

The machine learning pipeline is site-agnostic and can scale to all of Schibsted’s publishers

Campaign 1: 35% lower cost per order for highly scored vs. lower scored users

Campaign:• Two segments targeted, one with users likely to buy and

one with users less likely to buy • Targeted users saw an advertisement to purchase an

Aftenposten subscription in their Facebook news feed

Result:• 35% lower cost-per-order for highly scored users than

lower scored users

Campaign 2: +22% increase in conversions for targeted users vs. the control group

Campaign:• A segment of users likekly to buy was targeted and

compared with a control group of users with the same purchase probability on average

• Targeted users saw a sponsored post with a paid article in their Facebook news feed

Results:• +22 % increase in conversion for target vs. control group • Campaign ROI 47 095 NOK

Campaign 2: +22% increase in conversions for targeted users vs. the control group

10 %

20 %

30 %

40 %

2016-11-23 2016-11-24 2016-11-25 2016-11-26 2016-11-27 2016-11-28 2016-11-29 2016-11-30

Cumulative difference in conversion, target vs control group

+ 22 % conversions

Day of campaign

Team

Stefano CostantiniData Scientist

Schibsted

Ciarán Cody-KennyData Scientist

Schibsted

Rebecca WiborgData Scientist

Schibsted

Albert FranziData Engineer

Schibsted

Eivind Hjertholm FiskerudHead of Data and Analytics

Schibsted Norway

Kristina StamnesSenior AnalystAftenposten

Stig BreyholtzHead of analytics, Consumer sales

Schibsted Norway

Marius ThorkildsenDigital Marketing Lead

Aftenposten