# How Reuters’ dynamic paywall is boosting subscriptions and ads > Source: > Published: 2026-09-16 04:01:00+00:00 Join us Sept. 24 in NYC to connect with execs from Digitas, Claire's, Marriott, Havas and others [SECURE YOUR SEAT](https://digiday.com/events/ai-marketing-strategies-sep-2026/?source=display&utm-source=display) # How Reuters’ dynamic paywall is boosting subscriptions and ads This article is part of Digiday’s coverage of its Digiday Publishing Summit. [More from the series →](https://digiday.com/series/dps/) “It’s basically like magic. Overnight, the dollars start to flow.” That’s how Phil Andraos, gm for digital at Reuters, described the dynamic paywall Reuters launched earlier this year, speaking onstage at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami on Monday. Though Reuters’ subscription offering will reach its two year anniversary in October, the more recent dynamic paywall has been fundamental in growing Reuters’ subscriber base while also protecting its ad revenue business, Andraos said. “I think the point here is that it’s not sacrificing ad revenue to grow subscriptions. That is, I think, a false narrative,” he said. “Our advertising business is doing better today than it was before launching the paywall. They really reinforce each other. Our subscribers are very highly engaged. They’re authenticated. They come to our app [and] our website many, many times a day, and that helps drive our ad business.” Reuters’ president Paul Bascobert said in a Decoder podcast interview in June 2025 that the company [had over 100,000 subscribers](https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/663285/reuters-is-ready-to-stand-up-for-the-press-and-embrace-ai). Andraos declined to share how many subscribers Reuters has now. Subscription growth is “very news cycle dependent,” he said, and looks more like the “stock market” than a straight line going up. ## Inside the “magic” of the dynamic paywall The dynamic paywall’s machine-learning system takes a number of outputs – such as user behavior and content performance (whether a specific piece of content converted users) – and estimates how much ad revenue Reuters could make from that user, according to Andraos. Then it determines if it should show that user a paywall, based on how likely they are to convert based on those signals. Launching a subscription paywall may seem risky at a time when it is arguably harder than ever to get users to go to publishers’ sites. In a fragmented referral traffic environment, it might seem counterintuitive to put up blocks like paywalls in front of site visitors trying to access publishers’ content. (Similarweb data estimates Reuters’ site traffic dropped 19% year over year in August 2026.) But Reuters does not offer an ad-free experience as a benefit of its subscription offering, meaning subscribers still see ads on the site, according to Andraos. Highly-engaged audiences view more ads – and subscribers consume more content than non-subscribers, which means they’ll see more ads, he noted. Reuters can also collect first-party data on those users, which can be helpful in conversations with advertisers, Andraos added. “So often we focus on monthly uniques or monthly number of page views, but that I think is the wrong metric. It’s really about engagement. A smaller pool of highly engaged users can drive so much more ad revenue than a high base of loosely engaged readers,” Andraos said. The dynamic paywall also responds to the news cycle. It’ll tighten the paywall when the news cycle is very active, as it’ll clock higher content performance and users’ propensity to subscribe. Then it’ll loosen the paywall when the news cycle is slower, as “people are less likely to convert when it’s a slow news day,” Andraos said. Reuters decided to choose one flat, global price for the paywall: $4 a month. To promote transparent pricing, it doesn’t offer introductory offers or promotional prices, Andraos said. The subscription is available in 80 countries. ## Reuters’ bot blocking strategy Reuters is [one of the companies evaluating whether to block Google’s crawlers](https://digiday.com/media/media-briefing-threatening-to-quit-google-crawlers-is-just-publishers-new-hope/) to protect its content from being used in AI-generated summaries. Earlier this year, it adopted a [block-by-default approach to bots](https://digiday.com/media/reuters-and-time-adopt-bot-blocking-whitelists-to-rein-in-ai-crawlers/), though it continues to allow Google’s crawlers through.  Since making the change in May, bot traffic to Reuters’ site has declined, though Andraos did not say by how much. “Monetizable traffic,” on the other hand, has remained unchanged, he said onstage. (That’s largely because Reuters was already blocking most unwanted bots at the server level, with its [allow and disallow bot instructions in robots.txt](https://www.reuters.com/robots.txt) essentially serving as a public-facing reflection of those restrictions.) Reuters’ evaluation of which bots to block remains the same, regardless of if it’s Google or another platform: If the bots don’t help drive audience, ad revenue or subscription revenue but “profit from our content in one way or another,” then that bot needs to be blocked, Andraos said. “It’s not a fair trade-off. They are getting a benefit from crawling our site. We are not getting a benefit from letting them. That shifts the balance,” Andraos said. “If at some point it flips, where we feel the negatives outweigh the positives, then we’ll block certain bots.” ### More in Media #### [Kroger’s ad business sees most profit growth since 2021](https://digiday.com/media/krogers-ad-business-sees-most-profit-growth-since-2021/) Profit for the Kroger Precision Marketing advertising business grew 24% in the second quarter, according to Kroger’s latest financial earnings release. #### [Google rolls out pay-per-value AI licensing program to publishers](https://digiday.com/media/google-rolls-out-pay-value-ai-licensing-program-to-publishers/) Google has been quietly scaling a pay-per-value AI licensing scheme for publishers. But critics say the program looks less like a meaningful payout and more like a legal fig leaf. #### [What we’ve learned from the creator snafus at this year’s US Open](https://digiday.com/media/what-weve-learned-from-the-creator-snafus-at-this-years-us-open/) Everyone’s hating on creators at the US Open, but they’re here to stay in the tennis world, just perhaps with some adjustments.