Launches

MIT Technology Review launches on Pugpig Bolt serving targeted experiences to specific audience segments

Esteemed bimonthly title MIT Technology Review is the latest publication to launch their app on Pugpig Bolt. Let’s take a look…

15th December 2023

Esteemed bimonthly title MIT Technology Review is the latest publication to launch their app on Pugpig Bolt.

The app is amongst the first to use two of Bolt’s newest features – timeline layouts and the brand new Piano Experiences card type.

Beautiful content feeds, minimum effort

Bolt’s timeline layouts function reduces the need for complex feeds and the amount of custom work needed, making it even easier for the team at MIT Technology Review to build beautifully designed, completely customisable timelines that really centre on audience engagement.

The app uses timeline layouts to highlight a hero story within the ‘latest’ feed, create visual sections of the timeline for features like ‘opinion’ or ‘deep dive’ and for a beautifully designed ‘Editor’s Pick’ carousel. And while this was possible on Bolt before, it now takes a fraction of the time and effort for the MIT Technology Review team.

Targeted Piano experiences in timelines and articles

The app is also using Bolt’s brand new card type to target specific promotions and experiences to different customer segments based on their auth state in Piano.

The team at MIT Technology Review are using this to push alumni-specific events and content to alumni, a group that makes up a significant proportion of their users. They’re also using it to boost reader revenue, by upselling premium packages to subscribers and to encourage unknown users to subscribe.

On top of these two standout features, the app is also home to a beautifully responsive HTML digital edition of their bimonthly magazine and a hub for their newsletter content, and it’s great to see the MIT Technology Review team truly using the app as a home for all their content on mobile.

Plus, the app uses Bolt’s Google Ad Manager integration to deliver ads in timelines and articles and drive sponsored content from partners. Other integrations used include Airship for push notifications, Piano for user authentication and GA for analytics.

Using the app to drive paid subscriptions

By introducing a metered paywall with Bolt’s easy-to-implement paywall functionality, the app becomes an effective tool for driving subscriptions. Users get access to two free articles before being prompted to subscribe.

For Team Pugpig, this was an incredibly enjoyable scope of work – it’s always great to see customers as enthusiastic about Bolt’s new features and functionalities as we are.

The MIT Technology Review app is now live in both iOS and Android stores.