Douglas Arthur: Great. And then, Roland, just one sort of contextual question. In terms of this bundled multiproduct subscriber number of 2.5 million, is there a way to kind of give some color as to how much of that is print? How much of that comes from The Athletic? I mean how does that number break down in terms of what people are going at?
Roland Caputo: Yes. So first of all, I think last quarter, we changed the definition of that to exclude print. So that is exclusive — that 2.5 million is exclusively a digital number. So that’s the first thing to level set. You’ve also got two other categories of subs that we disclosed, and you’ll see how many folks have news in their subscription, how many folks have Athletic in their subscription. And you can track those increases as well. So a bundle will count there as well as a standalone. So the majority of the folks in that have at least a news entitlement and obviously, they have something else. So that’s by far the biggest chunk. And I would just add to that, the fastest growing piece of that is the bundle.
Douglas Arthur: Okay. So you used to call it total multiproduct subscribers. That included print. You’ve wiped that out. You’ve cleaned that up.
Roland Caputo: That’s right. We cleaned that up.
Operator: Our next question comes from Vasily Karasyov from Cannonball Research.
Vasily Karasyov: Meredith, you touched on it in your prepared remarks, but I wanted to ask you to talk in more detail what you’re seeing in how your subscribers or trial subscribers behaving in this — over the past several quarters that were going through inflation, recessional, whatever we want to call it, macro headwinds and stuff like that. Are you finding any kinds of behavior that are surprising to you and causing you to adjust your strategies, retention practices and acquisition strategies? So would appreciate some color on that.
Meredith Kopit Levien: Sure. And great question. Broadly, my answer is we’re not seeing much on the subscriber engagement or on the subscriber front that surprised us. Subscriber engagement, which was a huge area of focus in 2022, I think has gone well. We really like what we see. And I’d say part of why it’s gone so well is, as we put a lot of energy and resources into deliberate intervention to get people if they were new subscribers to experience more, and if they were bundled subscribers or potential bundled subscribers to do other things with us. We are building our understanding of what really drives that additional engagement if you buy the bundle versus news, I alluded to that in my prepared remarks. And it’s — if you engage with a second product, so if you’re a new subscriber and you’ve also engaged with The Athletic or you also engage with cooking or games, that is a retentive behavior.
So we’re very focused on driving that, and I would say, put a lot of energy into executing and that has gone well. I’ll add because I think you’re poking at it. We said a year ago at this time, maybe even a little further back that it was going to be really important to keep churn to a manageable level. And I think we’ve done that. It will be an ongoing focus, given the size of the base now. It’s quite important to the net add story. But so far, so good, and we — the bundle strategy plays a role in that. But just broadly, I think we have been able to hold churn to a manageable level.
Operator: Our next question comes from Thomas Yeh from Morgan Stanley.
Thomas Yeh: Meredith, you mentioned expectations for a sequential positive digital subscriber ARPU trend to continue throughout ’23. Does that include some benefit from these experiments that you cited around individual stand-alone products? And any more color on what you’re planning to implement there from a pricing change perspective would be really helpful? And then secondly, just any color on the drivers of the ad trends into 1Q. I think down low single digit seems to be sequentially better than the core trends in 4Q, excluding the extra days. Has the macro pressures that you kind of cited as picking up stayed the same or updated as we headed into the last few months, that would be great?
Meredith Kopit Levien: So I think I can remember all that. So on ARPU, there are a few things at play here. One is we continue to be successful at transitioning subscribers from promotions to interim and full prices. That’s going well. And that’s obviously a huge part of the model and the story here. And so, that’s a big driver. That’s one. Two, I’ll just remind you that the bundle itself, at every price point, even on a promotion, is a little more expensive than any individual product on a promotion. And then, of course, over time, the assumption is we’re going to transition bundle subscribers to higher prices as well. And that sort of the pricing power of the bundle versus individual products carries through the transition to full price.
So one, transition full price continuing to go well. Two, more bundled uptake has positive effect on ARPU. And then three, to your question, I think you’re asking more sharply. Yes, we have been in the market since the very end of last year testing price increases to a portion of the population who are tenured subscribers to individual products, so news and the other stand-alone products. And as I said in the prepared remarks, we like what we see. So far, I’ll just remind you, we’ve got experience here. I think I always forget if this is ’20 or ’21. I think in 2020, we did a major price increase. First one we had done since pay model launch for tenured news subscribers. And we went about that, and I kind of test first very rigorous way. And it went well.
And that’s what we’re doing here as well. And all of that should play a role in subscriber monetization and ARPU improvement, and that is a real focus for us this year. So I think that’s the first question. On ads, look, I think we’ve got the right strategy in ads. It is a really tough market, it’s a complicated market, but the Times benefits from a few things. One, and this goes to Doug’s question earlier, within — better with The Athletic but even before The Athletic, we play in a wide range of categories, and I think that helps us. Different categories fare differently in market cycles. For example, luxury was strong in the fourth quarter and other categories weren’t. So in general, the wits of our sort of marketer interest for the Times helps us.
And then I’m just — I’m going to keep saying that the basic thing the Times offers, which is a really premium environment with a very strong and growing powerful body first-party data that can help marketers target in privacy-forward ways is really benefiting us. So I think the strategy and the model are just really enduring in advertising.
Operator: Our next question comes from Ashton Welles from Evercore ISI.
