News

April Pugpig publisher check-in: Key takeaways including an update on Bolt Follow

Catch up on the highlights from this month’s Pugpig publisher check-in, including an update on Bolt Follow, customer news and more.

1st May 2025

rsvp to the May check-in

We had a pretty meaty product update in April’s publisher check-in that we’re keen you hear about. We’ve rounded up the key takeaways in this newsletter, plus the highlights from Eric Ulken’s (VP Product, The Baltimore Banner) session on The Banner’s vertical video strategy and the results they’ve seen so far. You can also watch the full recording here.

On next month’s check-in, we’ll be giving further product updates and an earlybird preview of our 2025 State of the Mobile Publishing Market report – you don’t want to miss it! Key details:

🗓️ Tuesday 27th May

⏰ 11am EDT/4pm BST

🎟️ Register for the event using this link

Pugpig customer team update

A look at the latest Pugpig app launches…

In April, we saw a range of exciting app launches and updates on our platform. Let’s take a quick look…

Lookout Local launched their second location, Lookout Eugene Springfield, as part of the Pugpig and Newspack partnership. It joins their first title, Lookout Santa Cruz (read more about that here) which launched earlier this year.
Soka Gakkai International’s World Tribune app saw a fresh new redesign.
Hearst went live with a design refresh on two of their apps: Red Magazine, which had been editions only, added content timelines, and Good Housekeeping had a visual update across the app, and added a Watch and Listen section for their new podcast series.

Stylist app is at the heart of their new VIP membership proposition

Stylist recently launched VIP membership across their site and app. Taking their design, we leveraged existing cards and functionality to deliver two timelines based on entitlement, a non-VIP timeline which outlines the benefits of signing up for VIP membership, and a VIP timeline providing the member with updates on their physical deliveries and linking to VIP membership offers.

The Stylist development team were able to provide us custom endpoints and RSS feeds for the VIP content so the end result looks very bespoke and yet uses pre-existing elements and features.

Pugpig Product Team update

Recent releases and upcoming features on Pugpig Bolt

Pugpig Head of Product, Harry, gave us an exciting update on our user-driven personalisation feature, Bolt Follow 1.0, before giving us the latest on what else we’ve been busy with including SDK 18, Dailymotion support and search improvements (all recently released).

read about our 2025 product roadmap

Bolt Follow 1.0

Rolling out as part of Pugpig Bolt very soon, Bolt Follow 1.0 is a way for users to curate their own personal space within your app by choosing the content, topics and authors they want to dig into further, in addition to all the curated content that’s already in your app.

On first experience, the new tab will be signposted via tooltips and, once clicked, will allow users to choose the topics, authors and categories they want to follow. The taxonomies can be configured however you like, such as sports team, recipe types, contributors or sections for example. You have a lot of control over what appears here and the order they appear in.

Once a user has selected the topics, terms and authors they’d like to follow, articles are pulled into a brand new chronological content timeline that’s accessible via the bottom navigation bar. We’ve called it ‘My News’ by default but you’re free to rename this how you like.

There is no upper limit to how many topics you list here – it really depends on the granularity of your content and how people are going to engage with it. As this rolls out and we see how it works in the wild, we’ll be able to share firmer guidelines for best practice.

Skip to 7m50s in the check-in recording to see Harry’s full demo and in-depth explanation of Bolt Follow 1.0. And, as always, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager if you have any questions or want any more information.

What functionality is included in Bolt Follow 1.0?

New user-personalised content tab
Multiple ways to follow – the new screen and via term cards
Introductory tool tips
Basic feature paywalling
Insights
A new home for saved content

What functionality is coming soon?

Tighter integration with the onboarding flow
Integrating notification preferences
Follow directly from articles and search
CRM/CDP sync, enabling shared following between Bolt and your website

Customer poll: Acquisition & monetisation

This month’s quick-fire poll focused on what we’re currently working on around acquisition and monetisation. Check out the results…

Monthly focus:

Lessons from The Baltimore Banner’s vertical video strategy, with Eric Ulken, VP Product at The Banner

This month, we were joined by VP Product, The Baltimore Banner, Eric Ulken. He walked us through their vertical video strategy they kicked off back in December, outlining their approach and touching on the results they’ve seen so far.

It’s well worth a watch, check out the 20 minute conversation below:

Skip to 25m15s of the recording to watch Eric’s session in full.