@mariedm - congrats! Love the design.
Edit: One suggestion - a personal peeve is when a site flashes up a "subscribe" modal when I've only been on the site for a few seconds. Not sure what the conversions are like on that, but personally I'd be more likely to do that if I'd had a chance to look around.
I don't know how most people react to these popups. I think there are stats since I guess that people who put these on their websites also put all sorts of trackers, but for me, it is often a signal to simply close the tab and never come back.
The reason is that it completely breaks my focus. I am reading an article, browsing stuff, and find it interesting. Then the popup pops. Now, I am distracted and start to think. Is it that interesting? What am I doing here? Then tell myself I have better things to do than stay on a website with aggressive popups.
And if the content really is good, I will just close the popup and continue reading. I mean, I am in the middle of a good article right now, I have better things to do than filling some form.
Don't worry, if your content is so good that I want to subscribe, I will find your button, you don't need to shove it in my face.
The thing that invariably makes me click away is a huge full-screen GDPR notice on an article that I've clicked because I might have a passing interest in it. It's quite a good attention filter!