The journey from vanity metrics to value metrics: Unlocking audience growth

In today’s digital media landscape, tracking page views alone no longer guarantees sustainability. Publishers must look beyond vanity metrics to understand what truly drives loyalty, subscriptions, and long-term revenue.

These were the central themes of the session “The Metrics That Matter: Unlocking Audience Growth” at The Media Rumble 2025, held in Bengaluru on October 3 and 4. Moderated by Swetha Susan Elias, Google’s Strategic Partner Development Manager, the discussion featured Chitranshu Tewari, former Product Director at Newslaundry; Hemant Jain, Head of Digital Business at Lokmat; and Meghna Singhania, Founder of Medical Dialogues.

Swetha started the discussion by asking what audience growth means.

“How many users we’ve got per month, how many visitors we’ve got, how many page views we’ve got. But it is also important to me to know what they are doing. I want that not only my number should go up, but I want the right kind of audience to come to my platform,” said Meghna.

Asked about the core metrics that Newslaundry relies on to measure audience retention, Chitranshu said, “We genuinely care how many people are actually ending up on our subscription page, right? We don't care, actually — like, we do keep an eye on volume traffic numbers. But for us, a much more important number is how many people are subscribing and what conversion rate our articles or stories drive from the top of the funnel to the bottom. And a lot more numbers around habit forming and engagement.”

Swetha asked Hemant about the metrics that drive critical growth as he straddles both worlds – print and digital. 

“A decade ago, most of the new sellers, publishers used to sell space in the form of display ads, banner ads…But believe me, the pace at which the inventory is being bought today, there is a huge shift…all the big advertising firms and brands today want to buy audiences,” said Hemant.

Asked for an example where insight or data led to a change in product strategy, Meghna said, “A couple of days back, we were just sitting and analysing the story about a weight loss medicine. It’s very common nowadays. And I normally expected that the usual diabetologist or a cardiologist would be reading more about weight-loss medicine, because they would be the ones prescribing it. But what we realised, based on the analytics, was that orthopaedicians read the story more. This is because people who are heavy, their knees pack up after some time…if they use the medicine on their patients, they can save their knees. So, they would also be prescribed those.”

As the discussion moved to age groups, Chitranshu said, “I think there's a lot of conversations around Gen Z, but young people historically don't pay for news. I don't think that's a new problem.”

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