2025-01-31. United Daily News Group (UDN) in Taiwan has significantly reshaped its subscription growth through a homegrown data-driven curation program called “Curate X.” The post Data drives 280% subscription growth at Taiwan’s United Daily News appeared first on WAN-IFRA.
UDN’s Data Development Department (DDD) established the program in 2021 to integrate data into the newsroom workflow and has been elemental in driving effective content monetisation and user-centric approaches.
The newsroom has the largest first-party data reserves among Taiwanese news publications, according to Lin Yi Lin, the Data Development Department Manager.
UDN has more than 7.3 million registered members and over 16 million monthly unique visitors.
In 2023, UDN had subscription growth of more than 280 percent, alongside a membership penetration growth exceeding 180 percent.
Three key strategies that helped UDN align its goals and outcomes are:
- Re-imagining the value of news content: This includes a deep understanding of audience needs and restructuring story development to encourage a broader scope.
- Rebuild newsroom transformation: This is done by fostering a culture of cross-functional collaboration and optimising workflows through data-driven insights.
- Content development for different business needs: The team is committed to content development tailored to different business needs, which involves behavioural segmentation of first-party users and the data-driven development of key topics to better meet user needs.
The UDN case study is one of 12 newsrooms featured in our innovation report. Free for WAN-IFRA Members, who may download it here.
Consensus Map provides a guideline for journalists
An initiative that leverages data in the Curate X program is UDN’s International Consensus Map, which helps journalists in content creation. It acts as a guideline for them to deliver precise content effectively by tailoring topics in accordance with the map.
The map features 36 dynamic data models applied across various sectors within UDN, focusing on different content areas and audience engagement strategies.
The Consensus Map
These include 18 data models focusing on editorial and newsroom, seven data models tailored to business services, three for digital news channels, two for video and audio programs, and six aimed at course programs.
“This dynamic model is updated daily through our central data system, and is aligned with breaking news. This approach helps in formulating precise content development strategies by continuously adjusting subtopics and content according to data insights,” said Lin. “We also conduct meetings to review the topics in the map over time.”
These meetings help the team to brainstorm for more compelling content that aligns with user interests and needs.
The Curate X framework
Curate X service models and portfolio
The Curate X Framework provides a detailed approach to implementing the program across various departments within UDN:
- Newsroom: Consensus maps are used to categorise news content, assess audience interest, and collaborate with reporters on content curation and data training.
- Business Service: The framework uses consensus maps to systematically categorise commercial content, ensuring that articles with specific keywords align with the defined content characteristics.
- Curriculum: The framework identifies audiences interested in specific content, categorises and analyses them using consensus maps, and explores which course features are most appealing.
- Delivery: This aspect focuses on identifying audiences on vertical news platforms, assessing their content interests, and prioritising content operations and development accordingly.
- Multimedia: Intelligent retrieval is used to categorise program scripts and interviews, aligning audience interest with program planning and behavioural characteristics.
- Brand Building: The Curate X program leverages data-driven collaboration for content brand development, identifying audience behavioural traits within specific content and brands, and implementing segmented strategies.
Fostering communication about audience engagement
The process of building a newsroom communication and collaboration bridge is centred on the Curate X approach.
“This involves managing initiatives to develop new editorial verticals, identifying key metrics for daily insights, and fostering communication about audience engagement,” said Lin.
She explained three processes:
- Newsroom process: The newsroom editorial workflow emphasises gathering input from field journalists, managing assignments, and providing strategic direction. Using a vertical topic consensus map and the Curate X dashboard, the process focuses on intelligent content curation, aligning news with audience interests for more relevant coverage.
- Sales and marketing process: Curate X integrates data-driven strategies into sales and marketing, starting with industry insights and business content curation, followed by data monitoring and optimisation. Collaboration workflows and consensus mapping ensure effective alignment with business goals and audience behaviour.
- Video/audio programs process: In video and audio production, Curate X optimises content through data integration and audience analysis. The process involves pre-interview planning, script optimisation, and continuous performance tracking, ensuring that content strategies meet audience expectations and engagement targets.
Identifying topics that convert subscribers
The DDD has published more than 5,000 articles and developed over 25 consensus map topics.
In the third quarter of 2021, non-member visits to the news site fell for topics under weapons and intelligence.
Using the Consensus Map as a guiding framework, the team experimented with different approaches, using special articles on prominent events such as the Airshow China 2021 and the Singapore Airshow 2022 to increase non-member visits. These efforts paid off with increases in non-member visits.
A thorough analysis of the consensus map revealed that the subscriber conversion rates for the specific topics such as education, opinion, society and culture remain consistently high, prompting the newsroom to continue writing real life stories in relation to those subtopics, according to Lin.
This approach yielded positive results, with a rise in conversion rate for real life content in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Journalists need content design strategies and tools to help them with content creation,” she said. “The establishment of cross-functional teams that set clear goals and have a shared culture is also essential for effective collaboration.”
Outcomes and results
Lin cited two cases where Curate X has helped boost subscriptions and member penetration.
The first case is of United Daily News’ VIP.udn.com, where, over a 24 month period, articles introduced with Curate X experienced a threefold increase in order conversions (blue line) compared to those without.
The second case is of Economic Daily News money.udn.com, where, over 2 years, the member penetration rate for individual articles with the implementation of Curate X is 3-4 times (blue line) higher than of those without.
Lin also listed a few lessons they’ve learned:
- The team developed a deeper understanding of audience behaviour and needs, leading to more effective story curation.
- It improved its skills in data-driven journalism, integrating user behaviour data with content development.
- This allowed them to tailor their story more effectively to audience interests, resulting in increased subscription and membership rates.
- Additionally, the project enhanced the newsroom’s digital literacy and technology adoption, marking a significant transformation in their approach to story and management.
United Daily News Group won the Best Subscription Product at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Awards Worldwide.
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