By: Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing
May 29th, 2025
Background
The Tampa Bay Times in Florida is the largest newspaper in the southeastern United States and a nationally recognized leader in investigative journalism, with multiple Pulitzer Prizes to its name. Known for its commitment to public service and digital innovation, the Times has taken a thoughtful, data-driven approach to growing its subscription business.
For years, the Times partnered with Mather to implement a targeted, segment-based paywall strategy—delivering meaningful gains and setting the stage for long-term digital growth. But as reader behavior evolved and industry pressures mounted, the team sought a more dynamic solution that could take their strategy even further.
That’s where Sophi came in. Born in the newsroom of The Globe and Mail, Sophi’s AI-powered Dynamic Paywall Engine uses real-time visitor behavior to determine the optimal moment to ask for a subscription, maximizing revenue while preserving engagement. For the Times, it represented a natural evolution: a way to move from broader audience segmentation to individualized decisioning, without adding operational complexity.
Objectives with Sophi
With Sophi guiding paywall decisions, the Times aimed to:
- Achieve at least a 10% lift in paywall conversions by increasing efficiency—without adding friction or compromising the reader experience.
- Maximize revenue per reader with advanced machine learning that dynamically evaluates subscription propensity in real time to deliver the ideal call to action at the right moment.
- Unlock new optimization opportunities while preserving core business rules and maintaining editorial flexibility.
The Path to Success
The Times and Mather began by aligning on business goals, editorial policies, and success metrics. From there, implementation moved quickly. Because Sophi operates on-device, it required only a lightweight code snippet with no complex integrations, minimal development, and no disruption to existing workflows. Within weeks, a controlled A/B test was live.
Half of the readers experienced the Times’ existing meter-based approach, which adjusted meter levels by engagement segment. The other half received real-time decisions powered by Sophi’s model. Editorial policies remained fully intact. Public-service journalism stayed freely accessible, and premium content rules were upheld. A dedicated dashboard gave the team full visibility into performance and impact.
Impact & Results
- Sophi’s rollout uncovered untapped opportunities through the paywall, increasing the intercept rate by 19% without introducing undue friction.
- These weren’t just more prompts—they were smarter, more effective ones, evidenced by a 15% lift in the paywall subscription rate and a 74% increase in total paywall subscriptions.
- Despite the increase in paywall activity, article pageviews remained strong, confirming that reader engagement was preserved.
Conclusion
The Tampa Bay Times shows how even a well-established paywall strategy can evolve and improve. By adopting intelligent, AI-powered decisioning, the team unlocked meaningful subscription growth while maintaining editorial flexibility and a strong reader experience.
With Sophi now guiding 100 percent of paywall decisions, the Times continues to test and learn to enhance performance and maximize revenue, while also leveraging Mather’s robust content and audience insights to inform paywall strategy, strengthen marketing efforts, and support content planning.
For publishers seeking sustainable growth in a complex digital environment, the Times’ experience offers a clear takeaway: with the right partners and AI-powered decisioning from solutions like Sophi, smarter growth is within reach—and the fastest way to see the impact is to put it to the test.
