Across the industry, publishers are facing similar pressures: search volatility, rising acquisition costs and the growing need to increase subscription lifetime value.
For many, the focus has shifted from driving more one-time traffic to deepening engagement and reducing churn.
Increasingly, publishers are finding that the answer isn’t always more news. It’s more habit.
As subscriptions overtake advertising as a primary revenue priority, retention becomes central to the business model. Small improvements in engagement and churn compound significantly over time.
But sustaining engagement between major news events can be difficult. News is episodic. Retention requires something more consistent.
Two publishers — WEHCO Media and CherryRoad Media — recently shared how they addressed this challenge using digital puzzles to build habitual return behavior.
WEHCO Media, headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, sought ways to deepen engagement and increase subscriber value beyond traditional news consumption.
Jay Horton, president, Digital Division, emphasized a simple but deliberate strategy: introduce puzzles early in the user journey to encourage repeat visits. Using King Features’ Puzzle Palace solution, implementation was straightforward.
“I think our first puzzle was up in 45 minutes,” Horton noted. “We just take our open page template, pop the puzzle code in and go live.”
WEHCO paired the rollout with a freemium model, using a soft paywall to collect first-party data — email and phone number entries — without creating friction .
The impact was measurable:
For WEHCO, puzzles became part of the subscription value proposition — not just supplemental content.
CherryRoad Media operates more than 90 newspapers across 18 states and faced high subscriber churn as it expanded its digital subscription strategy.
COO Lee Bachlet turned to King Features’ puzzles and games to enrich the digital experience and diversify engagement touchpoints.
Implementation required minimal lift.
“We didn’t need good tech people to do this. King Features knows how to make it easy.”
CherryRoad integrated puzzles alongside videos and photo galleries, strengthening engagement across properties.
The results were significant:
Bachlet described puzzles as “critical to our digital strategy, our newsletter strategy and our entire audience development approach.”
The common thread in both examples is not simply adding games. It is designing for repeat behavior.
Digital puzzles create:
In a landscape where referral traffic may fluctuate, routine provides stability.
Habit-based engagement does not replace journalism. It supports the business model around it.
As publishers gather at the America’s Newspapers Mega-Conference at the end of this month, the conversation will rightly focus on sustainability and growth. Habit-forming content is one of the most practical tools available to support both. Be sure to join us at our roundtable discussion.
To explore the research, benchmarks and implementation models behind this approach, download King Features’ Digital Puzzles White Paper at https://info.kingfeatures.com/PuzzlesWPRequest
For more information, contact Roland Hamilton at roland.hamilton@hearst.com or visit KingFeatures.com.
