I can only go off the stats they showed during Medium Day, which showed subs going up when the Boost came in. Maybe the issue is that there’s only so much room on homepages for such stories to be featured, so Boosted ones are now taking up that space?

Not to pry, but does your pub seem to rely on that casual new reader traffic? I would have thought your followers and email subs would regularly return to your articles daily anyway.