Puzzles, podcasts and AI-assisted article read-outs are just some of the techniques that UK media brands Stylist and the Daily Mail are using to ‘habit stack’ in their apps and make each interaction as engaging as possible. Felicity Thistlethwaite and Debora Hedy Amato talk to Pugpig’s Jonny Kaldor about what’s working for audience engagement, conversion and retention when it comes to their publisher apps.
Publisher audiences are encountering a tsunami of AI-generated crap, supercharging the demand for added-value user experiences. Our episode this week features a panel discussion from this year’s The Publisher Summit by MediaVoices on why apps are engagement powerhouses in the era of enshittification.
Hosted by Pugpig CEO Jonny Kaldor, DMG Media’s Senior Product Manager, Debora Hedy Amato, and The Stylist Group’s Head of Digital, Felicity Thistlethwaite, discussed how the premium experience offered in their apps sets them apart and why app strategy is vital to audience acquisition and retention.
Listen to the full session below, or search for ‘The Publisher Podcast’ wherever you listen to podcasts.
The big takeaways from this session were the importance of building apps around repeat use; designing a clear path for audiences to move from discovery to habit to subscription; and measuring app success across meaningful audience behaviours and business outcomes.
Pugpig CEO Jonny Kaldor, set the scene for the discussion by sharing some of the benchmark and survey data from the 2026 edition of Pugpig’s annual media app report, which brings together user data from around 440 apps across their portfolio.
The report highlights four key engagement metrics: sessions per month; screen views per session; session duration and total time spent on the app. Top performers see 40 user sessions a month with 60 screen views a session and total time spent per session in excess of 20 minutes.
“When you add that all up, you’ve got top performing apps looking at around 700 minutes per month per use,” Kaldor said.
Outlining a spectrum of app formats, from replica print facsimiles to mobile-first feed-based apps integrating audio, video and games, Kaldor outlined: “The publications who do more also tend to be the better-performing publications. This is why we get excited about doing extra stuff in these apps rather than just delivering the content from the website or the newspaper.”
App-first publishing
Adding a subscription offer to its free distribution in 2025, The Stylist Group’s primary business objective is subscriber growth. Thistlethwaite positioned its app as a ‘huge’ part of its business. “We have gone so far as to say, this financial year, we are app-first,” she explained.
“Everything we do is with the app front and centre. Our roadmap for the next three years is all about deepening the engagement and looking at everything we can do to build return users.”
Stylist has two subscription tiers – Stylist+ and Stylist VIP. Thistlethwaite described the VIP app as a place where members can go and feel ‘special’. “They have their own homepage. It’s an area where they have discounts, and it’s a place to talk about the events we put on for the VIP members.”
DMG Media operates a two-app strategy: its freemium Daily Mail rolling news app and The Daily Mail+ Editions app, which delivers a digital version of the newspaper. “The Editions app is more of a laid-back experience,” said Amato. “You can’t read it unless you are a subscriber. They read it on their iPads and come back almost every day, not only once a day, but multiple times a day.”
Amato noted that the ideal subscriber accesses Daily Mail content in multiple locations. “The best scenario is when we have a subscriber that engages with the desktop but then also uses the app… their churn rate really decreases.”
Retention vs acquisition
Kaldor acknowledged the consensus that apps are a strong retention vehicle, but wondered whether they were effective as acquisition channels: “There’s no bouncing in off the socials into an app,” he said.
Thistlethwaite disagreed, saying that she actually does see people coming to Stylist from the brand’s social media using app links. “That is one of our strongest acquisition tools. That is the top of our funnel. We’ve got 2.5 million social users across all of our accounts and we are deep linking. That is how we’re getting people to the app.”
She went on to say that their subscriber conversion rate is much stronger on the app than on the web because it’s a ‘good’ experience. “It is about the engagement. It’s about the return habits,” she outlined.
With the majority of its audience on the web, the Daily Mail’s most engaged users are in the app. Amato said dmg is looking closely at web-to-app strategies around how and when to prompt users to download the app. She emphasised that the objective is not just to get app downloads: “That could be a vanity metric. [We’re] making sure that the people that actually download the app keep coming back and they find the value.”
On the Editions app, DMG partners with the 55+ Saga Magazine and Hearst Magazines UK to bundle magazine content into the app. “That really helps the engagement,” said Amato. “They [also] come back again to play the multiple puzzles that we have.”
Supercharging with puzzles + audio
Kaldor agreed that games deliver a significant engagement uplift. “It’s insane how engaging these games are,” he said. “People who play games, on average, come in 40 times a month. For top-performing apps… those users are coming in 80 times a month.”
Thistlethwaite said puzzles are also a strong activity driver for Stylist. “Our puzzlers read 51% more articles,” she said, noting that Stylists puzzles used to be free, but are now 90% paywalled. “Puzzles have been really successful for us.”
Kaldor also spotlighted audio as a strong engagement driver. Pugpig’s report shows that the addition of audio content moves median usage from 200 minutes a month to 1,000 minutes a month for top performers. He outlined two different types of in-app audio: ‘Read this article to me,’ and podcasts, noting that the Daily Mail launched a text-to-speech feature about a year ago.
Amato said that for the Editions app, targeted at an older demographic, it’s not only a feature enhancement, but also an accessibility improvement. The Daily Mail app includes a podcast that Amato said is performing well and noted that The Daily Mail has recently launched a morning-brief style podcast, curated by journalists, but using an AI-generated voice and incorporating comments from readers. “We are picking some of the comments alongside the stories to give our readers a voice,” she explained.
Stylist also uses a text to speech feature and agreed that it has a strong impact on engagement. “We found that people who listen to any form of audio, and we’re just about to put podcasts on our app, are nine times more likely to come back again. It’s that habit stacking,” Thistlethwaite observed.
Listen to the full episode above, or search for MediaVoices’ ‘The Publisher Podcast’ wherever you find podcasts.
MediaVoices is part of Flashes & Flames Media Ltd.
