Subscribers to Adobe’s multi-app subscription plan, Creative Cloud All Apps, will be charged more starting on June 17 to accommodate for new generative AI features.

Adobe’s announcement, spotted by MakeUseOf, says the change will affect North American subscribers to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, which Adobe is renaming Creative Cloud Pro. Starting on June 17, Adobe will automatically renew Creative Cloud All Apps subscribers into the Creative Cloud Pro subscription, which will be $70 per month for individuals who commit to an annual plan, up from $60 for Creative Cloud All Apps. Annual plans for students and teachers plans are moving from $35/month to $40/month, and annual teams pricing will go from $90/month to $100/month. Monthly (non-annual) subscriptions are also increasing, from $90 to $105.

Further, in an apparent attempt to push generative AI users to more expensive subscriptions, as of June 17, Adobe will give new single-app subscribers just 25 generative AI credits instead of the current 500.

Read full article

Comments

• Unwanted subscriptions were about to get easier to cancel with the FTC's new click-to-cancel rule.
• But the commission just delayed its enforcement deadline by two more months.
• Ex-FTC commissioner Lina Khan says the move lets firms "keep trapping people" in pesky subscriptions.

It was about to get easier to get rid of that pesky subscription you've been stuck paying for until the Federal Trade Commission delayed enforcement of its new click-to-cancel rule.

Former FTC chair Lina Khan, in a Thursday post on X, said that the enforcement delay will give firms more time "to keep trapping people in subscriptions."

Most consumers are familiar with the unwanted subscription rigamarole: It's painlessly simple to sign up online for a streaming service, gym, or other subscription, but when the time comes to stop monthly payments and unsubscribe, there's no way to do it digitally, and you're forced into the dreaded routine of navigating call center chatbots that only seem to operate during the middle of your workday.

The FTC's click-to-cancel rule was supposed to go into effect in its entirety this week, ending the nightmarish cycle and making it just as easy for consumers to cancel their subscriptions as it was to start them. But on Friday, the commission's leaders voted to extend its enforcement deadline by two more months.

"Having conducted a fresh assessment of the burdens that forcing compliance by this date would impose, the Commission has determined that the original deferral period insufficiently accounted for the complexity of compliance," read a statement from Chairman Andrew Ferguson, co-signed by commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Mark Meador, about the decision.

After the FTC approved the click-to-cancel rule, also known as the Negative Option Rule, in November 2024, businesses had more than six months to comply before enforcement was scheduled to begin.

The rule's requirement to remove statements that misrepresent the nature of a subscription took effect on January 14. Its enforcement provisions — requiring clear disclosures, user consent, and easy cancellation policies —  were set to take effect on May 14. However, the FTC's latest decision pushes the enforcement deadline back by 60 days, to July 14.

"We object to the delay," former FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter said in a joint statement posted to social media on Tuesday. "And were we allowed to exercise our duties as commissioners, we would have voted 'no.'"

Bedoya and Slaughter were the only two Democrats serving as FTC commissioners until March 18, when President Donald Trump fired them. The pair, whose terminations indicated their service at the FTC was "inconsistent" with Trump's policy priorities, have filed suit against the administration, alleging their firings violate a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that the president cannot fire FTC commissioners without cause, CNN reported.

Even if Bedoya and Slaughter had remained at the FTC, the conservative majority at the commission would be able to pass rules via a 3-2 vote. The decision to delay the click-to-cancel enforcement received a 3-0 vote, with all three Republican commissioners voting in favor of the deadline extension.

"The companies create these traps," Bedoya and Slaughter's statement continued. "They're the ones who made it so hard to get out. They didn't have to wait to make it easier to unsubscribe. But they did — they waited until the FTC told them to stop. Then, they still got six months to get their houses in order. Why do they get another two months to comply?"

Representatives for the FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The CEO of the company that purchased VPNSecure in 2023 and claimed to not know that the VPN service provider had previously sold lifetime subscriptions has some regrets.

Earlier this week, Ars Technica reported on VPNSecure canceling thousands of lifetime subscriptions, starting in March. In an email to customers, VPNSecure said that it couldn't afford to maintain the subscriptions and that the current owners, InfiniteQuant Ltd, weren't told about the subscriptions when they bought VPNSecure. The sudden deactivation of accounts resulted in customer backlash online, including, as of this writing, 24 pages of one-star reviews on Trustpilot.

“… maybe, honestly, we should have just walked away from this 'opportunity,’” Romain Brabant, the CEO of InfiniteQuant Ltd, told Ars Technica when asked if he would have handled things differently in hindsight.

Read full article

Comments

If you're frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from "over 75,000" mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month.

The data is detailed in RevenueCat's 2025 State of Subscription Apps report. RevenueCat makes a mobile app subscription tool kit and gathered the report's data from apps using its platform. The report covers "more than $10 billion in revenue across more than a billion transactions," and RevenueCat's customer base ranges from indie-sized teams to large publishers. Buffer, ChatGPT, FC Barcelona, Goodnotes, and Reuters are among the San Francisco-based firm's customer base.

Additionally, the report examines apps that rely primarily on in-app subscriptions, as well as those that only generate some revenue from subscriptions. All apps examined, though, actively generate subscription revenue and "meet a minimum threshold of installs or revenue (to ensure statistically meaningful findings," according to the report.

Read full article

Comments

• Top New York Times editor Joe Kahn says the paper has grown in red states despite partisan division.
• Still, Pew Research shows more than twice as many Democrats (53%) as Republicans rely on the Times.
• Kahn laid out how the Times is trying to build reader trust and why it still has room to grow.

Top New York Times editor Joe Kahn says his paper has seen big growth outside the coasts and has room for more, despite the stark political divide in the US.

Americans vary widely in the news sources they rely on, depending on their politics. A 2024 Pew Research Center report found that even mass news outlets like ABC, CNN, and NPR that consider themselves nonpartisan are much more likely to be favored by Democrats over Republicans for political news. More than twice as many Democrats (53%) as Republicans rely on the Times, per Pew. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's election showed the declining influence of the mainstream media.

That would seem to present a challenge for those legacy outlets to grow their audiences when such a large swath of the country doesn't trust them. According to Gallup, Republicans are about twice as likely (59%) as the general public to distrust the mass media.

Despite that, Kahn said while the Times doesn't collect information on subscribers' political affiliations, it's had significant growth in red states.

"We tend not to target ideologically, but that said, our evidence shows we have significant penetration and readership in counties and parts of America that strongly favored Trump for president," Kahn said. "There are many things we do in our reporting that are of use to people who live all around the country."

A Times rep shared separately that its top 10 states for subscriber growth rates in the past five years were all outside the Northeast and West Coast and that the South was leading the way in audience growth. The Midwest and South — which largely voted for Trump in 2024 — make up 42% of its readership so far this year, the rep said.

The Times has an advantage because it has so many entry points beyond political news. Its remit spans news and lifestyle topics as well as its popular games and cooking apps. The Times has been a rare success story among major news outlets, with subscriber growth making up for essentially flat ad revenue.

"I'm not making a claim that lots of people who are hard-core MAGA right are among the main demo of New York Times readers," Kahn said. "The more people consider themselves partisans, the less likely they are to want to engage with a news brand that isn't aligned with their partisan interest. But I do think those people get a lot more attention than they actually represent."

How the Times is trying to counter declining trust

Kahn also laid out how the Times is trying to grow trust.

Here are a few ways:

• Providing more information about reporters and their expertise
• Encouraging its journalists to address readers directly via short-form video, which also can serve to reach people who aren't reading long-form text
• Looking at expanding its commenting features

While the Times is embracing new ways of doing things to open up its process to readers, Kahn remains firm that reporters shouldn't share their personal political opinions online, though some in the newsroom think it's time to abandon the tradition of appearing objective.

"I'm not interested in what fellow members of my newsroom think personally of the politics of the day," he said. "That's not part of their job and the value we're providing to people journalistically. Their job is to report on and understand and provide insight into the news of the day."

• Data suggests Netflix is likelier than rivals to win back subscribers after they cancel.
• Antenna found that 61% of subscribers who canceled in 2023 returned to the service within a year.
• Netflix also has an unrivaled churn rate within the industry.

For Netflix, a canceled subscription doesn't necessarily spell disaster. In fact, the service will probably get the subscriber back — and quickly.

Data from the analytics company Antenna provided to Business Insider indicates that within six months of canceling in 2023, 50% of subscribers rejoined the streamer. Within a year, 61% of subscribers were back on the platform.

That means Netflix's '"win-back curve" was steeper than the weighted average of its competitors.

All told, Antenna — which analyzed nine streaming services, including Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, and Max — found that 34% of US subscribers who canceled a service in 2023 returned to that service within six months, and 45% returned within a year.

Antenna measured win-back data for its annual "State of Subscriptions" report by looking at US cancellations initiated in 2023, excluding free tiers. The company used data from millions of transaction records, weighted to be representative of the US population.

Netflix declined to comment.

In addition to winning back subscribers, the streamer bests its rivals when it comes to churn rate, or the monthly rate of people who cancel a subscription.

Antenna has consistently pegged Netflix's monthly churn rate at 2%, far less than the weighted average of competitors.

Netflix added a record number of subscribers last quarter — the last time it'll be breaking out those figures — and recently pushed through another price increase.

Even if that price increase causes some subscribers to cancel, this data suggests there's a good chance they'll come crawling back.

• Netflix gained a record number of new subscribers in the fourth quarter.
• The ads plan, launched in 2022, reached 70 million worldwide users in November.
• Netflix is counting on ads to fuel its growth in 2025 and beyond.

Netflix added a record number of new subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, as couch potatoes flocked to the streamer for popular programming like Christmas Day NFL games and season 2 of "Squid Game."

But such massive growth in new subscribers can't continue forever (especially as Netflix pushed through another price increase this week). That's part of the reason many investors and analysts have been turning their focus to advertising, which they expect to fuel Netflix's next wave of growth.

Netflix launched the ads plan — which costs $8 a month after a $1 price increase this week — in November 2022. The company said in November that the ad tier had reached 70 million global users. It said in its earnings release Tuesday that the ad plan makes up over 55% of new sign-ups in countries where it's available.

When the ad plan first launched, the company cautioned investors that growth would be slow. Those days are over. Netflix told analysts it doubled its ad revenue in 2024 and expects to double it again in 2025, as it adopts tech that will make it easier for advertisers to buy ads.

"2025 is the year we transition from crawl to walk," co-CEO Greg Peters said on an analyst call.

The ads era is still a relatively new one for Netflix. For most of its history, it eschewed advertising. That changed after it reported a subscription loss in 2022 that rattled investors. The ads plan has helped the company return to growth and cement its place as the king of the streamers, with more than 300 million global subscribers. It's also why Netflix has introduced more live programming like comedy and sports, which are popular with advertisers.

The ads plan does more than add to Netflix's subscriber numbers. It can improve Netflix's average revenue per subscriber. The company has said it expected that figure to grow as it builds out its ads business.

The ad plan can also sometimes keep subscribers from canceling by offering a lower-priced alternative. Netflix's standard plan is now $18 a month — $10 more than its ad-supported one.

Netflix's overall monthly churn rate, at 1.8% in December, was the lowest of the premium streamers, according to Antenna, a subscription data firm. Churn for the ads plan itself was higher, at 2.9% in December, though that is still well below the industry average.

Netflix's ads tier can also serve as an on-ramp to a higher-priced subscription. A Wedbush Securities survey of about 1,000 people in December found that 10% of those with ad plans said they planned to trade up to an ad-free one.

Of respondents who were not current Netflix users, slightly more indicated that they would definitely or likely consider subscribing to an ad plan (51%) compared with an ad-free one (38%).

"Over the past year, our survey has consistently shown that new and returning users increasingly value the ad tier at least on par with the premium tiers," the firm wrote.

File transfer service WeTransfer is now limiting users to 10 transfers per month with its free plan. The company is already applying the new limit to users, as per a support page. At the same time, WeTransfer is adding some perks to the free plan, including increasing the overall file transfer limit from 2GB to […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Uber over whether it broke consumer protection laws by allegedly automatically signing people up for its Uber One subscription service and making it hard to cancel, according to Bloomberg News. The investigation was opened earlier this year after the FTC received customer complaints. Uber told Bloomberg that its cancellation […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• It used to be that leaving Fox News or other big media outlets was the end of your career.
• Not anymore. Ask two former Fox hosts, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, or Bari Weiss, an ex-New York Times editor.
• Chris Balfe, who helps those stars find audiences and make money via podcasts and YouTube, says there will be more people doing the same thing.

The 2024 election was a podcast election and a YouTube election.

There was also something else new at play here: It was an election where several people who used to have high-profile, influential perches at big mainstream media organizations found new, influential perches on the internet, at companies they built and own themselves. People like the former Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and the former New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss.

This was an idea we've heard about for a long time, and one we saw put into practice back in 2011 — when Glenn Beck split with Fox News and started TheBlaze, his own subscription streaming service. But until recently, we hadn't seen many people follow in his footsteps. Now it's becoming a well-worn path.

I wanted to understand why this is happening now, and how it's working, so I asked a man who's directly involved: Chris Balfe, the CEO of Red Seat Ventures — a company that has helped Carlson, Kelly, and Weiss set up their podcast and streaming businesses, and sells ads for them. Not coincidentally, Balfe used to work with Beck at TheBlaze (the duo had a messy divorce).

As Balfe explains, the Big Media-to-the-internet route isn't going to work for everyone. I also don't want to overstate the trend. Even though traditional media like cable TV is in decline, it's going to be with us for some time. See: Donald Trump, who wants to stock his administration with people he's watched on Fox — just like he did in his first term.

But talking to Balfe gives you a good sense of what's happening behind the scenes, and the challenges that still remain for stars who want to make the leap. You can listen to our entire conversation on my "Channels" podcast; here's an edited excerpt of our chat.

More than a decade ago, you were working with Glenn Beck, who left Fox News and started TheBlaze. At the time, it seemed like we would see more people doing what he did — leaving mainstream media, going to digital, and building an audience there. But that didn't happen, really, until the last couple years. Why did it take so long, and why is it happening now?

Two things. One is that the technology and tools have caught up in a big way. When we launched TheBlaze, we had to mail people Roku boxes and say, "Hook this up to the back of your TV. You might need something called an HDMI cable. We'll send you one of those if you want one."

You would literally mail your subscribers Roku boxes?

Yeah. And explain to them how they would download an app and watch it. And so clearly, with every TV in the world having connectivity, and every toaster in the world having connectivity, that technical hurdle and user-behavior hurdle is gone.

Sixty million people just watched Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.

Exactly. The second change is the monetization side. Where are the dollars?

When we think about people who are in both a linear-network space and a digital space, it's easier to scale, quicker to scale, and potentially more lucrative in the digital space.

You're saying it's potentially more lucrative than a traditional big-dollar TV contract?

That definitely depends on the talent. We talk to folks who want to leave traditional media, and we hear how much money they're making, and we say, "Wow, that's a great deal for you. And if I model out how long it's going to take you to make that, if we're successful, it might be three years before you can make that kind of money again. And that's if we're successful — we might not be."

So for a lot of people, we suggest hanging on to those big, fat media paychecks as long as you can. If you're trying to replace a $2 million-a-year paycheck, it's going to take time. Unless you're Tucker Carlson.

Is there a certain kind of person that works well in traditional media that can also succeed in digital?

What doesn't work is someone who's there by virtue of the time period that they're on TV. So if you're a nightly news anchor — no offense to the nightly news anchors — you are unlikely to be successful as a podcaster because you're being paid $5, $10, $15 million a year. And if you were out that night and your "B" host goes in, the [ratings] probably are exactly the same.

But shouldn't the exposure you're getting on mainstream media be enough to bring a portion of your audience to digital?

I'd say mostly not. There's really a fandom component to it, and that's the dark-arts part of this — when each person comes to us, and we try to evaluate [the power of their fandom].

People — agents, in particular — always say, "Is it the number of Facebook followers, or followers on X or whatever?" It's not really any of those things. It's watching the show. It's listening and talking to people about how they react to this person. And would you kind of proverbially walk across broken glass [for them]? Because we're switching you from a push medium to a pull medium. And that means people are going to want to have to pull.

When Tucker Carlson was pushed out of Fox, did you have any concern that his work would not translate to digital?

Definitely not. I felt very strongly that Tucker was going to have the No. 1 podcast in the country. Or No. 2, depending on how quickly Joe Rogan grows.

Why him, compared to any other person who's on TV with a big audience?

The answer is his ability to be at the forefront of the creation of media moments rather than covering media moments.

This is one of the things we talk about a lot in news, and especially in right-of-center news: There are a lot of podcasts, YouTube shows, TV shows, and radio shows where news happens, and they react to it. It's interesting because they're interesting people, but that's sort of the end of it. There are a few personalities who have the ability to create news cycles rather than react to news cycles.

Glenn Beck was a big one of those back when he was at Fox News, in particular, but also on TheBlaze. And I would point to Tucker Carlson, absolutely, and say, "This is a person who's a must-watch — not just for the right but for everyone to try to figure out what the heck he's talking about."

He's intriguing, inflammatory. Both. He's visiting Vladimir Putin.

And Megyn is doing that increasingly right now. The coverage that Megyn is getting across the entire internet for every single thing that she says or does right now is really astounding. I haven't seen anything like it since the Glenn Beck Fox News days, where there is a newsworthy piece of content that comes out of every one of her podcasts these days.

I also think that goes toward this shift that we've been talking about, where for a long time, whatever happened on podcasts happened between the ears of the people listening and didn't make it successfully out into the rest of the world.

And now the top podcasts are making news more often — not because the shows have gotten better but because people are paying more attention and realizing great content is happening there.

How is the money working? There used to be a stigma about advertising on right-wing, conservative spaces in general, and podcasts in general, for different reasons. It seems you're still struggling with that — you're not getting blue-chip advertisers on Tucker Carlson's show.

It's correct that it's rare that we see any Fortune 500 company spending a lot of dollars in any controversial space: news, true crime, right-of-center politics, left-of-center politics. "Brand safety" is still something that big brands are concerned about — obsessed with, in certain cases — and therefore they avoid all politics and all news and all true crime and all other things that people like to listen to.

What's most valuable to you right now, a podcast listener or a YouTube viewer?

A podcast listener, if they subscribe to the podcast feed on Spotify or Apple, is the most valuable because they're the stickiest. They spend the most time with a given show. There's automatic downloads, in the case of those two apps. And once they follow or subscribe, they're going to get every episode. They're more likely to stick with us. They have more lifetime value.

They haven't pulled out a credit card, but it's almost as if they have. They've committed to you in some way.

And then they start making a mental appointment in their own brain about, "How often is this show coming out? When am I going to make the time in my daily life to listen to that show?" There's really more of a commitment to podcast listening.

Whereas on YouTube, it's still super valuable to us. But of the people who are coming and watching on YouTube, 70% of those people are not subscribers to our channel. They're being recommended algorithmically.

And the two concerns that I have about that is one — clearly they're not as big a fan. So they may not be as responsive to advertising. Or they may watch one video and not the next. And two — we've all gone through algorithmic hell in the past with Facebook and every other platform.

The algorithm that brought them there is an algorithm that could not bring them there tomorrow.

For sure.