That makes sense: the platform has grown over the last two decades into a service that’s  too big to ignore. Last year it reportedly generated $60bn in revenue, indicative of its might. Even the most reticent broadcaster has experimented with dropping short highlights onto the service. It has also proven to be an excellent place to host video podcasts, with the visual element acting as a multiplying factor in terms of views.

Most importantly, however, YouTube has been consistent in delivering views to its biggest channels.

That consistency will be a welcome respite for publishers. With AI-powered search results reportedly cutting traffic to news sites’ by up to 79%, it’s understandable that they would look to increase their presence on a platform that is, at least, reliable in at least one way. 

To that end we have seen a number of news sites recruiting for YouTube-specialist video producers, suggesting that the platform is climbing publishers’ priority lists in 2026. The Reuters Institute’s ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026’ found that “in terms of off-platform strategies, YouTube will be the main focus for publishers this year with a net score of +74, up substantially on last year”.

In the UK, for example, Reach Plc’s CFO Darren Fisher noted that Facebook and YouTube “are increasingly rewarding, engaging content”, in the face of falling digital revenue elsewhere. 

Where before the platform might have been seen as a source of supplementary ad revenue, it is now being factored into audience acquisition strategies more directly, as legacy media seeks ways to turn off-platform engagement into a viable audience development strategy.

In the UK the platform is the second most-watched service in the UK, behind the BBC and ahead of the commercial-powered ITV. That provides media businesses with a reliable opportunity to scoop up new fans, who can either be monetized through ads on the platform or converted to paying subscribers on the business’ own site.

YouTube personalities

Typically, the channels that succeed on YouTube have a recurring team of creators and on-camera talent, which is consistent with video consumption trends and preferences. This format, aping the traditional television content alongside which YouTube increasingly competes on CTV, is increasingly personality-driven. There are YouTube news stars whose fame eclipses that of traditional television.

That presents a big shift for some media businesses who typically put the brand front and center over individual journalists.

Chris Gallipeau, director of video and audio strategy at Canada-based Postmedia notes that, indeed, the team has found personality-led content – or at least videos with consistent hosts – has worked especially well across its brands/ “We’ve also found that having a consistent host or voice makes a big impact on engagement, he said. “Videos with a familiar, regular personality often see viewership double compared to those without. 

“The best performing voices or faces are often well-known contributors and popular names from our opinion and commentary sections of the newspapers where audiences already have a strong connection to their perspectives.”

Similarly, The Sun’s Director of Video Jon Lloyd explains that works well on YouTube, with its reliance on thumbnails that prominently feature the hosts:

“We have found through hosts, shows are more likely to become appointment viewing  with viewers. Our viewers for Tactics Exposed love Dean Scoggins and Will Pugh’s football expertise – and let us know in the comments. They come back to it weekly as they know they’re going to have a clearer understanding of the game. They might stay through any dips if they recognize and trust the person speaking, which leads to longer listening sessions and higher completion rates.”

As an example, the group’s Vancouver Sun editor-in-chief Harold Munro is a frequent face on the paper’s channel, speaking with various members of the team in explainer style shortform videos. Some publications have a leg up on that approach, having monetized their personality-led podcasts on the platform for years. 

Chris Stone, executive producer of podcasts and video at the New Statesman, says: “That video extends our audience reach on YouTube but also on social platforms. The purpose of that is to grow the top of our funnel. Having video helps to expand your reach on socials, that’s certainly what’s happening with us… and the easiest way to produce that is from our podcasts.”

Consistency and growth

Gallipeau explains that, even if the form of the journalism has necessarily changed, the group’s editorial strategy is an extension of its coverage elsewhere: “Postmedia has found success in both long and short-form video content on YouTube especially for our major news brands. 

“What seems to really drive success is the topic. For brands like National Post and The Toronto Sun, there is a big appetite for federal and provincial political content. When we produce videos on those subjects, regardless of length, it generally outperforms the average video.”

That lines up with research about the news consumption habits of US adults. Per a Pew Research Center study, 35% of US adults self-report that they ‘regularly’ get news from YouTube channels.

The big question is the extent to which YouTube will remain consistent and prioritize that sort of news-led content within its algorithm. Writing for Nieman Lab, Joon Lee argues that, as it gets squeezed by Netflix, YouTube has recognized the need for legitimacy of the sort that legacy media can confer. 

As Lee puts it, “YouTube doesn’t need journalism to boost ad revenue. It needs journalism to anchor its reputational power in the same way newspapers once anchored civic life.”

Shorts and resources

While YouTube might want legacy content to increase its legitimacy, publishers do have to tailor their content to each platform if they want to succeed. 

Charlie Carmichael, Head of Audience at talkSPORT, states that the brand has seen some significant uptick in subscribers as a result of taking advantage of the subchannel option on YouTube. “This platform-first mindset helped us grow our YouTube revenue by 30% YoY in 2025,” he said. “In addition to diversifying our audience and reducing the talkSPORT main channel’s share of views from 81% to 67%. It’s also unlocked new partnership opportunities, and we’ve increasingly experimented with live-streaming non-traditional rights.”

However, despite a media brand’s popularity on shelves or screens, there is plenty more competition on the video site. As a result there are examples of best practice that even the biggest news brands have to adhere to, particularly with regards to recurring personalities and recognizable series.

Gallipeau explains: “On some of our larger brands, we work to apply YouTube best practices to help our video content stand out. We’ve also found great success in using formats like YouTube Shorts to raise awareness and drive traffic to our channels. This has a significant impact on subscriber and viewership growth.”

The benefit of committing to the Shorts format is that – while tweaking is still required – it allows media business’ YouTube efforts to bear fruit elsewhere. 

At the New York Times, for example, the video team is investing heavily in vertical video of the sort that can sit on YouTube Shorts in addition to TikTok and Instagram. The paper’s video director Solana Pyne told The Hollywood Reporter that “our videos live both on our own platform and on a whole range of social platforms, Instagram, TikTok, also YouTube. We don’t make video that would live only or thrive only on one platform.”

Unsurprisingly, many other newspapers are making their video content work harder on the platform. 

The Guardian, for example, repurposes sections of its longform explainers for the Shorts section. It acts as both a trailer for the ‘main’ video and an antennae that reaches the subsection of the YouTube audience that primarily consumes Shorts.

As YouTube climbs publisher and broadcasters’ priority lists in the face of uncertainty elsewhere, they are to some extent dancing to the platform’s tune in terms of video format Personality-led videos and the parasocial relationships they create with an audience are the order of the day, and Shorts are practically mandatory for discovery.

Alex Rothwell, Head of Video for The Times and The Sunday Times, notes that the team has identified that different forms of video on the platform work towards different ends. He said, “We have different approaches to our multiple YouTube channels to serve specific goals; revenue, audience growth, or a combination of the two.”

He does note, though, that maintaining a consistent identity across those channels is key: “Across all of our YouTube output, we maintain a consistent visual identity by using The Times thumbnail branding. We’ve also developed repeatable formats – such as Explains, Investigates, and Documentaries – which help build a loyal audience over time by establishing a clear and recognisable editorial identity.”

YouTube, then, presents legacy publishers with an opportunity to widen the top of the funnel when it comes to acquiring audiences. It is, though, still a platform over which publishers and broadcasters have next to no control; the trick is in gaming its ability to concentrate audiences around a news channel while increasing investment with the brand itself.

The post Publishers rethink YouTube strategy as search traffic erodes appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Five years ago, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, many major businesses in the US announced their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. It was meant to be a period of reckoning with social inequality, one that would have a long-term impact on culture in general.

That was the case at many news outlets, whose coverage had been blinkered by a lack of minority representation. However, half a decade later, we have seen those initiatives stall–or even backslide.

Dr. Amy Ross Arguedas is a Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, with a particular specialism in trust. She is co-author of the report ‘Race and leadership in the news media 2025: Evidence from five markets’. She describes the situation saying, that “where we saw some improvements during the past five or six years… we just see that things are pretty much back to where they were at the very beginning of all of this.”

Retreat on diversity

The Reuters Institute study found that “in the US, the percentage of top editors of colour also decreased – to 15%, compared with 29% last year”. While causality is difficult to establish, similar trends were also observed in the UK:  there are “fewer top editors of colour.” Precisely zero major outlets in the Institute’s sample had a minority editor.

Those trends have been exacerbated by a number of job losses across the industry that disproportionately impact minority journalists. For example, Vibe magazine, a rap and R&B-focused magazine originally co-founded by Quincy Jones, was acquired by Penske Media in October. In the immediate aftermath, many of its journalists were laid off, leading to a fundraiser organized by Vibe reporter Mya Abraham to help the eliminated staffers.

Abraham says: “I’m not sure there’s one or several ways to “ensure” that minorities aren’t disproportionately impacted by layoffs. Several of us have already worked twice as hard to gain half – or less than – a non-minority.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re often the first to be discarded when media companies restructure or fold completely. It would be great if job security was based on actual merit as opposed to someone just blindly making a decision without knowing your true value.”

Similarly, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) called out the dismantling of minority-focused teams at NBC after a number of job cuts in October. At the time, Errin Haines, NABJ president, said: “the decision to eliminate these diversity teams goes beyond a line item on a budget, executed at a time when accurate and inclusive storytelling is needed most.”

Similarly, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has noted the preponderance of job losses among its members. Errin Haines, president of The National Association of Black Journalists, said: “When our industry catches a cold, journalists of color catch the flu, because newsroom cuts always disproportionately impact us. Diversity is too often the casualty of media consolidation, downsizing, or layoffs; we are frequently the last hired and first fired. This is not a new phenomenon, but what is new in this climate is political rhetoric that minimizes the value of diverse perspectives and representation across a range of institutions — including journalism.”

Revenue short-termism

Regardless of the motivations for the job cuts, the question is whether they will deliver any tangible benefit in the long run. As the saying goes, you can’t cut your way to growth.

That calculation becomes even more precarious when the potential audience upside of diverse coverage is considered. Many media organizations are now relying on reaching new audiences and media companies across the board must prepare for generational turnover. Some, including the LA Times, have launched sub-editions dedicated to reaching minority audiences, which are predicated on being able to speak to that community knowledgeably and authentically. Doing so requires representation in terms of journalists.

Jendella Benson is head of editorial for Black Ballad. She explains that “Audiences are not ‘locked in’ to heritage/mainstream media brands as they once were with so many options out there. They will go wherever they feel their values and concerns are reflected. Even in digital media, we are already seeing some of this happening with audience fragmentation. People are moving away from established media brands for various reasons, and moving towards more ‘niche’ or highly specific outlets that either share their interests or political perspectives.”

It’s a position backed up by the Reuters Institute’s research. Where there isn’t representation, there is a lack of an ability to spot the opportunities to speak to new communities. Dr. Arguedas explains: “As we note in the fact sheet there can be an argument made in terms of your ability to speak to certain kinds of audiences, to understand their needs.

As the report states, “Failing to address these disparities… can also potentially erode trust, particularly among marginalized and under-served groups that have for a very long time expressed their discontent and grievances around how their communities are portrayed in the news media.”

That is especially important given that a lack of trust in the news media is frequently cited as one of the main reasons for a lack of financial support for news, particularly among young audiences. Cutting back on diversity, then, leads to a less diverse audience profile in turn, stunting opportunities for audience growth.

Ethical and commercial synergy

A number of the biggest US-based publications declined to share their future DEI plans for this article. In the UK, where the political situation is perhaps less fraught, national publisher Reach plc cited a number of its ongoing initiatives, including its work with The Prince’s Trust to encourage young people from underrepresented backgrounds to get into journalism:

“Through that program we now have 8 young people in our newsrooms on training contracts who might have otherwise found it more difficult to break into the profession. This year we have renewed the program with a focus on regional newsrooms.”

Notably, much of the messaging around the DEI initiatives that do still exist, such as those at Reach plc, is predicated on the idea that it is the right thing to do. Increasing equity is the end in itself for some news organizations, rather than a path to profitability.

However, the two aims are not mutually exclusive. Benson says: “Media platforms who are offloading ‘the diversity’ within their newsrooms and editorial departments are essentially accelerating their decline in my opinion. They might be able to keep treading water for now, but when more of Generation Alpha start to age into media consumption, they will find an audience that will not have the inclination to engage with a brand that doesn’t match their expectations when it comes to basic representation.

“And as we know, advertisers go wherever the audience is.”

It would not be fair to single out the media industry for that backslide. Companies including Amazon, Disney, Google and Meta have abandoned DEI policies, which the Guardian attributes to pressure placed upon them by the Trump administration. It cites research from law firm Freeths, which found that 22% of respondents said profit motivations came into conflict with ethical and moral concerns at their organization “very regularly”. 32% said regularly, and 37% said sometimes.

The difference is that, for an industry that is predominantly based on audience trust, journalism cannot afford to become any less diverse. Abandoning DEI might be more palatable to the powerful right now, but in the long-term it risks making media outlets less appealing to the young and minority audiences that their future depends upon.

The post The hidden business risks of pulling back on media DEI appeared first on Digital Content Next.

However, despite the undisputed appeal for audiences, it presents media businesses with a conundrum: produce video content cheaply to maximize ROI, or invest in quality video leveraging the brand, with the risk of a lower return. So how do media businesses choose which topics or subjects are right to build a video strategy around. And when do revenue opportunities like sponsors enter into those discussions?

Commercial viability

For most outlets, video has to pay its way. Documentary-style video is expensive to produce. Therefore, it is often simply not worth the investment for primarily text-based commodity news publishers. 

To offset that issue (i.e., the high cost of video production and the risk of spending money on content that doesn’t pay off), The Independent created Independent TV with a clear rule: No video series gets made unless it already has a sponsor or advertiser committed to funding it.

This commissioning bottleneck of sorts serves as a test of whether the subject was of worth to a potential sponsor in video form. The approach does present potential frustration lin that that advertising priorities dictate what gets made, meaning creative or editorially strong concepts could stall if they didn’t appeal to sponsors. However, this approach prevented the paper from spending a significant amount of money on a video project that might never have been commercially viable.

A similar approach is taken by The Sun, which has seen its video share of digital revenue increased to 18% in the latest reported results. Jon Lloyd, Director of Video for the newspaper says that, “Making video in isolation doesn’t make sense at The Sun; when commissioning Sun Originals the commercial considerations are right at the beginning. That was the genesis for Sun Originals: high quality shows which advertisers like to sponsor. 

“It must always be editorially driven and work for our audiences. But editorial teams will work with the commercial teams in order to launch the show and build the commercial aspect in, tailoring it to the client. It can’t just be their name on the show anymore.”

As a result of that strategy The Sun is working with clients who “have never used us in a digital capacity before, like M&S and Card Factory”. Recognizing the synergy between its consumer-focused news approach and the commercial opportunity, it has been focused on two specific content verticals for Originals commissioning: sports and Fabulous, which encompasses women’s fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

At the same time, commercial considerations do not factor into discussions around video creation for news organizations whose commercial proposition is more supporter-based.

The Guardian confirms that they do not create videos with sponsors in mind. Those discussions are not part of the overall decision about when and where to launch a video series. 

Nevertheless, the company is not ignoring the audience growth opportunities of digital video  and is set to invest further in using it for storytelling. As its editor-in-chief recently told Press Gazette, “I mean, at the moment, [when] we get a big story, it usually will have a podcast attached for example. It will usually have a video explainer attached. It will usually have all sorts of stuff attached already, but I think it’s the next stage of that.”

Cost vs return

Some major titles are increasingly looking to video as an audience growth opportunity first. The idea is that audiences attracted by video are likely to convert, even if that form of content does not exactly match the majority of the paper’s content.

Juliet Riddell is head of new formats at the Financial Times, which has been experimenting with news-led short films. Its latest, ‘Recall Me Maybe’, is a short fictional film that examines dementia, AI, and the unreliability of memory and artificial intelligence. That’s quite the departure for the title. However, its position in front of the paywall speaks to its belief that video of this sort is worth investing in as an audience acquisition tool.

Speaking to Media Voices, Riddell explained: “All the films are trying to connect an audience with something that’s happening now and that we feel we need to communicate now.”  

We also see a number of publications investing in digital video to diversify the audiences that are exposed to the brand, albeit with a far lower cost base. That is particularly true for those media businesses looking to convert more audiences by creating more touchpoints.

Chris Stone is executive producer of podcasts and video at the New Statesman. He explains: “We’re already producing podcasts, so adding video to that production workflow doubles up on the content that we’re making, so we’re getting more out of a single record. That video then extends our audience reach on YouTube, [and] also on social platforms. And the purpose of that is to grow the top of our funnel.”

He also notes that the ROI of a piece of content – in any form – is based on how widely it can be repurposed: “If I was starting something from scratch, I wouldn’t start with original video. I would start with multimedia content that can be repurposed on lots of different platforms.”

Beyond digital video

Given the scale of investment in video podcasts over the past few years – with a recently announced collaboration between Spotify and Netflix acting as the cherry on top – it is unsurprising that newsbrands recognize the value of delivering its star audio content in another broadly-accessible format. Vox, for instance, has just poached the NYT’s Astead Herndon, appointing him as a host and editorial director with a remit to launch and lead a new multiplatform video podcast. 

This approach bears fruit for publishers that have been investing in multimedia content for years: the podcasts have already proven to be commercially successful in audio, and the additional costs of filming and editing them are relatively small. In commissioning these relatively small, these media businesses take advantage of advertisers’ hunger for video content, and video’s ability to open up new audiences. 

Whether it is a high-quality audience play like that of the Financial Times, or the more commercial-led commissioning approach, video is increasingly seen as a must-have for news and magazine brands. Finding the sweet spot between commercial growth and audience development is paramount, but dependent on the wider commercial strategy of the title.

The post Publishers reveal their ROI equation for digital video appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Recent research has demonstrated the extent to which Google Zero is impacting traffic to publishers’ websites. Pew Research Center found that “users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits)”.

Worse still, those users are “more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary than on pages without a summary”. It is an end to curiosity. And, crucially for news publishers, it is curtailing discovery. That is especially difficult for commodity news sites, which have made advertising served to unknown audiences their priority. Those logged-out users have little incentive to click through to receive exactly the same information, but with more ads served up to them. 

It is already hitting home: over 60% of Gen Z and 50% of millennials are already choosing to use AI – on platforms like ChatGPT – instead of conventional search.

Logging in

It is, at least, validation for the news and information businesses that have prioritized creating a logged-in ecosystem. 

Just as Google is driving the open web with its zero clickthrough approach, the name of the game for those businesses is keeping users within their own ecosystem. External links, attrition of interest, or even just the allure of new types of content elsewhere… these all run the risk of loosening the net and having users slip out.

But those businesses are in the minority. For example, 78% of digital revenue across DCN’s members still comes from advertising. But that revenue is now under threat, as advertisers seek to shift spend to AI-powered search results.

So, media businesses are both grappling with Google Zero and seeking to retain audiences at all times. Are there any silver bullets? 

Unusually for this industry, the answer this time might just be ‘yes’. To a point, at least.

The app, a regular fixture within a media business’ arsenal, might provide the solution to those issues – as long as publishers recognize how audiences use them in 2025.

Multimedia apps

As parts of the industry seek to make the logged-in economy the standard, how far along the path to primacy are news apps?

On the face of it, the initial stats look bleak. Per the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, younger audiences are increasingly unlikely to visit news sites or apps.

These findings build upon research from the previous year’s report, which found that only 22% of news consumers in general identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news. That was down a full 10 percentage points when compared to respondents in 2018.

However, publishers have not been ignorant of that fact. Many have done their best to ameliorate that issue. They have taken note of the fact that audiences are choosing to receive news content in the form of digital video. In order to cater to that – as well as the trend towards vertical video on mobile devices – media companies, including the BBC, have chosen to include vertical video within their apps.

It is part of a wider trend towards making news apps more multimedia-oriented. The thought process is: if AI is making it harder to bring news consumers into the ecosystem, we need to cater to a wider variety of their wants once they are within. That should – in theory – prevent them from leaving.

Sarah Hartman, VP of product at The New York Times, says her team is investing in that multimedia approach: “The app also offers an optimal experience of our audio journalism. We’re increasingly leaning into multimodal UX to give our users more flexibility and control, while always meeting our high standards of craft.”

In the UK, the Observer (formerly Tortoise Media) is making a concerted effort to keep listeners to its in-app audio around once they have finished a podcast episode. Its audience growth editor for podcasts Aleena Augustine explained at the Publisher App Summit 2025 that the app has a dedicated curation team, who manually create a recommendation feed per podcast designed to lead listeners onto another piece of content, whether audio or text.

Speaking at the same event Muj Ali, group product manager of acquisition, retention and apps for the Financial Times, noted that 70% of its subscriber traffic now comes via its app. 

He also stated that there is plenty of headroom to expand its content and audience strategies: “It’s the most engaged channel that we have, but also the most underutilized… but in general, it’s a place that we want to continue to grow.”

Games and growth

While news and information is the bread and butter of a media business’s activity, the need to keep audiences within the app is forcing many to branch out into other areas. Famously, the New York Times has increasingly invested in games precisely because of how “sticky” they make its app. Other titles, including the Telegraph and Guardian in the UK, have emulated that approach as well. 

This shift is backed up by research from Pugpig: apps with games and multimedia more generally have a significantly higher engagement rate than those with news content alone.

That has also been demonstrated outside of the hard news environment. In the UK, Stylist found that audience members who engaged with its puzzles were 68% more likely to read an article that same week.

Additionally, publishers are trying to make the content within their apps more habit-based than incidental: according to the same 2025 Pugpig Media App Report, edition-based news apps outperform their timeline-based equivalents with regards to engagement. It speaks to an opportunity app-based publishers have to zig where the always-available AI search entities zag.

Appointment-based publishing, audio and video, and games are likely to get people to stick around once they are within the app. With AI-powered search, however, the task of getting audiences into a news publishers’ ecosystem remains a difficult one.

Hartman states that, as with all of the NYT’s products, the best use of its app is to highlight the strong journalistic work its team produces: “We’ll likely need to evolve our interfaces to meet changing user expectations around personalization, adaptability, and brevity. But we also believe that the fundamental purpose of our app, providing a direct connection to our journalism served in the best possible way, will continue to be a valuable proposition.”

For news publishers with strong brands and reputations, it might well be possible to stem the tide of Google Zero.

Audiences are becoming more aware of AI-search’s limitations, and publishers can provide context beyond a SERP snippet. Provided those media businesses have invested in making their apps sticky. For, once audiences have landed, the humble app may indeed be a solution to this new problem.

The post Can apps help publishers overcome Google Zero? appeared first on Digital Content Next.

However live events are often an expression of the “soft power” of a media brand. They act as a statement of the company’s influence, whether through big name sponsors and celebrities that attend, or by effectively setting the agenda for the industry through insight and expertise. They are a demonstration of the media company’s relevance for both its audience and potential commercial partners, whether B2C or B2B.

It is no surprise, then, that events remain a priority for many media businesses. However, while they are a source of revenue unto themselves, they are also being employed to support other revenue streams, including subscriptions.

Events and subscription marketing

Live events – especially the flagship conferences and exhibitions held by consumer titles – are exclusive by nature. While their content is often repackaged in article or video form, there is a cachet in attending them in-person and rubbing shoulders with celebrities and peers.

That exclusive nature is therefore being used by savvy subscription- or membership-focused media businesses. Access to those events is desirable, and is being used in subscription marketing material throughout the funnel. The Guardian, for example, offers its members discounted tickets to events at its owned-and-operated live events space in London, a physical benefit in addition to its central message of supporting its journalism.

However, events can support subscription growth as well. Anna Bross, SVP Communications for The Atlantic explains that, “Access to our events is a selling point from the first welcome and onboarding for our subscribers. We also market subscriptions in tandem with our events: ‘become a subscriber to unlock the full breadth of our journalism’.”

“The Atlantic has focused on exclusive events benefits for subscribers, particularly for our flagship event The Atlantic Festival: things like early access to ticket sales; subscriber-only event moments; and discounts. We have also produced subscriber-only virtual events.”

Brad Greenawalt, Vice President of Subscriptions at Hearst Magazines, notes that the appeal of live events can be used throughout the funnel when it comes to converting readers. “We view live events as an opportunity across the funnel. It can be a great audience expansion opportunity, getting new audiences closer to the brand and experience, as well as a lower funnel strategy for more niche premium subscription events. 

“Live events are a key selling point for our premium memberships and help drive subscriber conversion and retention.” He cites the UK’s ELLE Collective’s Beauty Masterclasses and GoodHousekeeping’s VIP membership Book Club conversations with authors as some of the events that work especially well for its subscription-oriented publications.

In line with the ongoing trend towards making access to journalists a selling point for subscriptions, live events are also being used and marketed as a way to speak to those journalists in-person. Every organization spoken to for this article mentioned that live events are being used to deepen engagement by way of connecting subscribers with the journalists whose content they consume.

Dow Jones’ VP, Leadership and Event Marketing Laura Verklin said that “Audiences used to be dependent on news organizations for access to information. Now that information is somewhat of a commodity but reliability is the differentiator. Our events allow us to foster a deep sense of trust and transparency with our audience by allowing them to engage and interact directly with reporters and editors while they’re on stage with global decision makers. It underscores the Journal’s editorial integrity and access to global leaders shaping our future.”

Superfans and creating touchpoints

The rule of thumb is that it is far easier (and, crucially, cheaper) to prevent a subscriber from churning than it is to convert a new reader to a subscriber. As a result, events are being considered as a major means of developing the relationship between publication and their readers to a degree where they will pay to support its mission. 

More than half (63%) of audience members who complete post-event surveys for the Guardian, for example, say they are more likely to financially support the Guardian after attending one of its events. 

A Guardian spokesperson explained that is due in part to using the live events to showcase the Guardian’s unique selling points during the event, which in turn supports those same messages in its membership marketing materials: “Our audiences appreciate the opportunity to ask their questions to our journalists and guests to feel closer to our journalism. It is also a great opportunity to showcase the human element of Guardian journalism in contrast to the rise of AI-generated content.”

Greenawalt also cites post-event feedback as being a significant source of audience information. The team uses the insights provided to tinker with and inform future events and other marketing strategies.

Bross explains that “Hyper-engaged subscribers are more likely to attend events. But those who attend events, whether hyper-engaged or not, are less likely to churn than those who do not attend events. Ultimately, we utilize our experiences to strengthen the perceived value of a subscription, deepen brand affinity with The Atlantic and give our subscribers unique access to our journalists and journalism.”

Creating events for new subscribers

However, that isn’t to say that events are aimed at or even solely marketed towards “superfans.” While these highly-engaged audience members are often the most lucrative for consumer brands, they are also touchpoints for new potential members. Publications are creating events with those new members in mind. The Guardian spokesperson explains that “It depends on the event. It is true that many of our supporters who frequently read the Guardian attend our events. Different speakers and topics also attract different audiences.”

That considered, curated approach is as important for information-based publications, which are predicated on appealing to very specific audiences. Verklin explains that “Exclusive access to our live events is a key differentiator when we market a subscription or membership to one of our C-Suite communities. These moments of in-person connection help deepen trust in the brand and create tangible value that differentiates a premium subscription from more transactional options.”

So as with trial memberships or limited access to some content on a timed basis, events are being created as a ‘lure’ for potential subscribers. Greenawalt says: “Although events draw in highly engaged members, we’ve also found success using it for our new audiences as well. Our newest membership, Veranda Gold Design Society, offered members the opportunity to go on an exclusive tour at the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Palm Beach with Editor-in-Chief Steele Marcoux earlier this year.“

Event strategy and subscription marketing strategies, then, are becoming more intertwined. Each is being used to support the other, with discounted tickets or exclusive access being used to demonstrate the value of a subscription throughout the funnel.

The post Events boost media businesses’ subscription strategies appeared first on Digital Content Next.

This has been especially true for broadcasters. Where once their competition for video content might have been a handful of terrestrial channels, they now compete for time and attention with digital video platforms. That has led to concern among commercial broadcasters, as advertisers seek to reach those younger audiences – often at the expense of ad spend on traditional broadcast channels.

Globally, media buyers GroupM predict that linear television revenue will decrease by 3.4% over the course of 2025 as ad spend shifts over to streaming television. And, while linear TV still accounts for a significant portion of viewing, streaming is nearly equal. Millennials and Gen Z viewers are driving the move toward streaming and social video platforms, favoring the flexibility to watch content on-demand and across devices. These factors put pressure on traditional broadcasters to accelerate the shift to digital-first strategies that will satisfy audiences and advertisers alike. 

Programs and priorities

The form of video content audiences choose to watch has been altered by new platforms. Short-form video has become the standard for many viewers, particularly those who are spending increasing amounts of time on platforms like TikTok. That’s especially true for younger viewers: fewer than half of Gen Z viewers in the UK watch broadcast television. The 48% that do spend roughly three times as much time watching video on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. In the US the trends are similar: TikTok has roughly ten million more users than linear TV in the Gen Z demographic.

In particular, YouTube is too big for broadcasters looking to recoup those audience and revenue shifts to ignore. When it comes to competition, the video-sharing platform is now literally encroaching on traditional broadcasters’ territory: as of earlier this year more time is spent watching YouTube on TVs as on users’ phones.

That has led to radical shifts in production and distribution strategy. So, how are major broadcasters keeping up with those changing audience habits – and using their expertise to stay ahead of the pack when it comes to taking advantage of new platforms – YouTube in particular?

YouTube: A channel for video discovery

Ashley Hovey is Chief Digital Officer for the CW Network. She explains that YouTube is a priority for the company as it seeks to create new means by which audiences can discover its programs: “YouTube is a part of the broader fragmented media ecosystem, which plays a role in driving audiences that can complement our [owned and operated] platforms. YouTube is a great place for discovery and sampling, while owned properties can drive deeper engagement and brand advocacy.”

That speaks to the need for broadcasters to approach YouTube in a way that does not cannibalize existing video audiences or ad revenue. Despite the headlines, traditional broadcasting still attracts a vast amount of ad spend overall. Thus, it is vital to protect that revenue as broadcasters experiment with new platforms.

A Channel 4 spokesperson affirms that the strategy is to find complementary audiences on the platform, rather than migrating existing audiences over: “The audiences on YouTube are additive. So, it is a great way to direct people to content that we think they’ll enjoy and engage a larger, younger-skewing audience.

“We experiment heavily with the great data that YouTube generates. It is at the heart of everything we do. On YouTube, video distribution and views are as reliant on algorithm science as they are an entertaining format.”

As a result, that discovery flows both ways: through the use of YouTube’s tools – designed specifically for digital distribution – broadcasters are able to find out more about their audiences online. That informs not just ad sales, but commissioning strategy as well.

BBC Studios is the commercial subsidiary of the UK’s first public broadcaster. Its Digital Commercial & Partnerships Director Anaïs González Espinosa explains: “Through the YouTube Content ID tool, we’ve also been able to only not protect our content, which is very important for us, but also use the data as a demonstrator of consumer demand to inform our content pipeline and some of the choices we make.”

Space to experiment

For many broadcasters, YouTube is also a staging ground for new formats. That can range from content specifically created with digital video in mind – such as Channel 4’s upcoming “social-first short-form channel focused on cooking and food.” It also offers an opportunity to repurpose existing content.

Some broadcasters, for instance, upload entire episodes of their stock of programming to YouTube. That can be entire season, series, or “taster” episodes designed to entice viewers to seek out the rest of a season on their owned-and-operated channels. Others, meanwhile, create short highlight videos with the same goal in mind, but geared towards short-form social sharing.

The Channel 4 spokesperson shared that “One area we saw go from strength-to-strength in 2024 was full-episodes on YouTube, with an increase of 331% for UK views in the first nine months of 2024. Key titles that pulled in audiences were entertainment series… and documentaries including Click for Murder and 60 Days on the Estates, plus made for YouTube shows such as Minor Issues and Tapped Out.”

Compared with broadcast television, in which audiences were largely separate, watching from their own sofas, YouTube and other digital video platforms allow more opportunities for viewer interaction. Taking cues from livestreaming specialist platforms like Twitch, YouTube has prioritized live audience chat alongside much of its content. Espinosa says: “We use posts and community tabs to engage with our fandoms, enhancing their experiences with our content on the platform. Views are important but engagement on YouTube is key to success.”

Hovey confirms that the CW Network is also set to experiment with those “live” features soon, as a result of the increased engagement it can deliver.

However, she also notes that the platforms’ other creator-led features allow for experimentation with distribution: “The CW tests out new YouTube features depending on the content type. For example, we use the Thumbnail Test & Compare feature for our sports clips. This allows us to test different thumbnail designs for WWE matches and NASCAR races and helps optimize overall watch time for both.”

With YouTube’s increased focus on AI to translate its content to other languages, and further changes to memberships on the platform on the horizon, there is plenty of scope for broadcasters to continue experimenting. And thy have the added advantage of not needing to invest in those tools themselves.

Considered and careful

Traditional broadcasters, then, are approaching YouTube with both commercial and audience considerations in mind. The platform itself is too big to ignore. In fact, there would be an opportunity cost to not at least have a presence on it.

However, what is especially apparent in 2025 is that broadcasters are being highly considered when it comes to YouTube. It is a competitor for ad revenue, but also a collaborator when it comes to discovering new audiences and new opportunities for engagement.

As a result, broadcasters are constantly reappraising their strategy for publishing to the platform, as ad spend continues to shift and new tools and formats emerge. With the rise of features such as content locked behind memberships and in-app merch stores on the platform, broadcasters have access to new revenue and engagement models via YouTube – and are finding ways to do so without diminishing their opportunities on more traditional platforms.

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That has implications for news organizations seeking to grow, engage, and inform audiences. That, in turn, limits the ability of those titles to hold power to account.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. He is also the co-author of a new book entitled Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism, which delves deeper into the causes of and solutions to news avoidance in greater detail.

In an interview about the book, he tells me that the idea arose from his work on the annual Digital News Report. “We noticed that in the United States almost 10% say that they use news less often than once a month or never. And as someone who believes firmly in the importance of journalism, and who used to think that everyone engaged with the news… I just kept staring at that figure.”

So, he set out to learn more, asking “Who are these people? Why do they say they use so little news? And how do they navigate the world without it?”

He found that, while the impact of public disengagement with newspapers’ missions are the most obvious consequence of news avoidance, it has less immediately apparent implications for media business models. It presents challenges around propensity to pay for news, keyword blocking – and that does not begin to account for the societal impact of citizens choosing to avoid essential news and information.

His research also found a variety of causes for news avoidance among the public, whether that was selectively or constantly. Nielsen says that the majority of news avoiders do not avoid media in general. Rather, there is something specific about news content that repels them.

The psychological impact of negative news

One of the most prominent is that news content can create psychological stress among sections of the audience who are ill-equipped to deal with it. Whether that is as a result of wider social pressures in their lives or simple exhaustion from work, Nielsen says a proportion of respondents believe they have no mental availability to engage with news content:

“What they often seek from the media is something pleasant, something that can help them recharge and renew, as they face another day of often very demanding tasks that they have to take on to provide for themselves or families.”

That is exacerbated by a perception that news content is primarily negative. The adage that “if it bleeds it leads” is undeniably true – perhaps ever more so in the age of social media. However, the trade off for news publishers is that a subset of the audience will disengage from negativity entirely.

So when the news is perceived to be overly negative audiences will choose to avoid it. That feeds the perennial problem of keyword blocking among advertisers, who also seek to avoid association with that negativity – even when the coverage is entirely warranted by a need to inform the public.

Blacklisted, by readers and advertisers

Nielsen acknowledges that news avoidance is not a phenomenon that exists in a vacuum. It feeds into those other issues like keyword blocklists: “We could probably write a whole separate book about advertisers avoiding the news. But at the end of the day, publishers who are relying on advertising will have to consider the reality that much of the public and many advertisers aren’t interested in being next to pieces of journalism that they regard as being divisive and depressing and perhaps not that valuable.”

In Avoiding the News Nielsen and his co-authors acknowledge that, in the case of people’s attitude to media, “perception is reality.” But in line with their recommendations to publishers, they also suggest potential solutions to these issues, one of which is to take a more positive approach to coverage to prevent that disengagement:

Neilsen says that “there is a good case to be made that that media literacy has been very focused on helping people be critical, which is important. But there is a companion [argument] that it’s about helping people be affirmative, about making decisions about what’s good enough in a world of imperfect choices of information.”

Payments, perception, and representation

Another prominent cause of news avoidance is that the public – still – does not feel represented by the news. They do not believe it is either by or for them. Nielsen explains: “There is a very clear sense amongst many of our interviewees that news isn’t for people like them, that news is for people who are older, who identify as male, for people who are well off.”

He likens it to the way that some people say classical music or contemporary art is something that’s “perfectly fine for other people, but it’s not really for people like me.”

That, too, has implications for media business models. An increasing number of media organizations seek to build out subscription models. However, the perception of a lack of representation shrinks the total addressable audience, limiting the potential for converting significant numbers of readers to members or subscribers.

It goes back to what Nielsen describes as a discussion around “identity and ideology.” He notes that the belief that news is not representative is not universal, nor is it unique to either left- or right-leaning audiences. Instead it comes from a wider societal sense of disenfranchisement: the perception is stronger among right-leaning people in the U.S., but among left-leaning people in the U.K. Nielsen attributes this in part to the fact that the U.K .press is perceived to skew right more generally.

However, he points out that “In the U.K., in the U.S., large parts of the public are disenchanted with politics, and they see news as intertwined with politics not in an independent from it. And that sense of alienation from politics in turn informs their relationship with journalism.”

As a result the authors of Avoiding the News say that one potential solution is that the industry needs to recognize that it currently does not speak to as wide an array of people as it could: “It is within the power of journalists and editors to think about ‘what are the sources that we feature?’ ‘What are the topics that we feature?’ ‘How do we write about communities near and far?’ And ‘is it worth more proactively trying to address these very vocal and consistent and long standing concerns many parts of the public have?’”

Community engagement and games we play

Another factor in news avoidance lies in sections of the public not being part of any “news communities.” Nielsen explains that “They don’t get any social affirmation or reinforcement, the way that many white collar people with high levels of formal education move in circles where they’re constantly affirmed that engaging with the news is important and it makes us kind of a better person. It’s not only right, it’s also righteous.”

For news organizations whose audience acquisition and retention strategies rely on bringing audience members into their own news communities, that presents a problem. It is one thing to introduce someone who already interacts with other people around news content into the fold; it is another thing entirely to create that behavior in people.

Membership-based organizations like the U.K.’s “slow news” brand Tortoise rely in part on using their engaged members as ambassadors for the brand.

However, as the success of the New York Times’ cooking and games apps make clear, news content is not the only thing that draws new audience members into the fold. Adjacent products like crosswords – which make community high scores etc. part of their appeal – are ways to sidestep this issue and potentially engage those audiences at a later date.

This time, it might really be personal

News avoidance has risen in priority among media companies’ priority lists over the past few years. On February 27th in the U.K., a House of Lords committee into the impact of technology on news saw it raised as a problem that needs to be overcome, for example. While much of that concern is predicated on the impact on the efficacy of journalism, the subtext is that news avoidance is contributing to media companies’ revenue woes.

Nielsen says that while a lot of the reasons for news avoidance are societal and structural rather than as a direct result of media companies’ decisions, there are still actions editors and journalists can undertake to mitigate it:

“I know that many journalists and news organizations feel a bit uneasy about ideas of personalization. [But] if news media and journalists want to serve everybody, they probably need a more differentiated offer including packaging things for people who may want to hear some things that did not go wrong in the world yesterday before we get to things that [did].”

Ultimately many of the potential solutions presented in the book lie in doubling down on journalism’s promise: to represent the whole public, not just the most affluent members of society, and to ensure that readers and viewers feel that representation.

Nielsen says: “I also would just invite journalists and editors to read some of what citizens told us in our interviews as we feature in the book, because I think on closer inspection, some journalists and editors may admit that people have a point about some of their criticisms of journalism.”

The post Addressing the collateral damage of news avoidance appeared first on Digital Content Next.

It could be as simple as a subscriber deciding their affiliation with a publication has run its course after a change in the tone of the journalism. It might reflect financial circumstances. Or it could simply be too many things to read or watch and too little time. The National Research Group found that 23% of people who cancel subscriptions say they do so because they weren’t using them enough, which in many cases is not a failing on the media company’s part.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism also found that a proportion of subscribers do not want to feel “tied down” to any one news source. Other media companies – always in competition – might make active efforts to lure subscribers away through aggressive and antagonistic advertising campaigns.

However, there are macroeconomic factors that publishers cannot control that lead people to cancel subscriptions. In the face of challenging financial times, it won’t surprise any newspaper or magazine publisher that “poor value for money” is cited as among the most common reasons for cancellation. That’s a difficult barrier to overcome – although it is one some publications try to address by reminding consumers of the value of their subscriptions through newsletters and content recommendations.

Media companies may have to grapple with more churn in the near future. While suggesting that consumers have not reached “peak subscription,” research from Toolkits has found that a large percentage of people who have taken up news subscriptions expect to cancel some in 2024, for a variety of reasons including those mentioned above.

These factors are likely to be impacted by new legislation coming into force in the UK and EU (as well as proposed legislation in the US), which aims to streamline the process by which consumers can cancel subscriptions. For media companies – many of which argue they are not responsible for the trends that have made such legislature necessary – that presents two main challenges. The first is that they would have to bear the cost of enabling cancellation through new channels, which UK broadcaster Sky says will add significant costs to its businesses. The second is that, at a time when the rush to find sustainable subscription revenue is hotting up, it could increase the levels of churn.

For example, Sky argues the government’s proposals to tackle the problem of customers being billed for unwanted subscriptions were “too prescriptive.” This call is echoed by many media companies, which in some cases still require consumers to call to cancel a subscription.

But there is a growing body of evidence that such pain will be short-term, and that it is in media company’s favor to enable one-click-cancellation.

Proof of value

Research from McKinsey finds that of the 40% of consumers who choose to cancel subscriptions the majority that do tend to cancel do so early in their subscriptions. Those early terminations have a deleterious impact on the data that can be gathered on the consumer, making attempts to prevent cancellation more difficult.

However, it is also the case that the relationship doesn’t end as a result of cancellations. Some media companies, including Guardian News & Media, use a cancellation as a cause for further contact. Its subscriptions and sales teams will often reach out to a subscriber who has cancelled a direct debit or regular payment to find out why.

It is a technique used by other subscription-based businesses, which make distinctions between lapsed and unengaged consumers. While the latter require much more work to bring into an ecosystem, the former already have an emotional connection with the brand. Most importantly for digital subscriptions, many will continue to share their data with a brand following cancellation, making efforts to re-engage and remonetize them quicker and easier.

Given that the maxim that new consumers are five times as costly to acquire as existing subscribers are to re-up, that creates a huge incentive for media companies to continue their marketing efforts towards lapsed subscribers. Doing so mitigates the risk highlighted by McKinsey that lapsed subscribers do not continue to provide data for use in honing subscription strategies.

Cost of cancellation

In the US, the risk of more churn and less certainty around subscription revenue has been exacerbated by what the Federal Trade Commission considers effectively duplicitous activity from subscription-based companies. FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said: “Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didn’t sign up for in the first place.”

Just as in the UK, media companies in the US feel that their businesses are going to be unduly impacted by the bad behavior of other actors in the subscription space. As a result, they are largely opposed to the implementation of “ease of cancel” rules that could lead to consumers cancelling more easily.

However, there are early signs that such efforts would not impact media companies quite as badly as might have been expected. Toolkits conducted a study of over 1,000 consumers in the US who have subscribed to digital publications. It found – in the face of expectations – that over two thirds (67%) would “more readily purchase new subscriptions if they thought those subscriptions could be cancelled easily”. Over three-quarters (77%) percent of consumers also said they would support the proposed laws requiring “one-click cancelation” mechanisms.

Zamir Walimohamed is head of digital, marketing and subscriptions at Motor Sport Magazine. He acknowledges that as a legacy brand the magazine has an advantage in converting paid print subscribers to digital: however he also notes that even niche titles face challenges around churn and re-upping subscribers.

Despite those challenges he argues that easy cancellations are not necessarily the end to the relationship between media companies and consumers. Instead, he says, it is an opportunity to better understand readers and what makes them subscribe in the first place: “If a customer is on a bundle and cancel a pop up appears saying ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Or would you also be interested in a lower offer’, which is only digital only, for example.”

He states that it is on media companies to demonstrate an understanding of why consumers would want to cancel in the first place. Moreover, he argues that the relationship is better served by making that process as easy as possible.

However, as he and other subscription managers note, the data collected throughout the active lifecycle does not lose its value the moment a subscriber cancels. Instead, the data points about why a consumer has cancelled are valuable not just enticing them into the fold, but for preventing other readers choosing to cancel as well.

The post If you love them, let them go: the case for easy subscription cancellations appeared first on Digital Content Next.

News and magazine publishers have always boasted of their relationship with their audiences. Direct, unfiltered access to consumers has always been part of their selling point to advertisers. And that’s never been truer than now.

With Google still making its slow march towards the deprecation of third-party cookies in 2024, brands and advertisers are hungry for alternatives to ensure a good ROI. That has provided digital media organizations with a megaphone to shout about the data they have on their members and subscribers – data which has been freely handed over during and after sign-up, and which avoids the privacy issues related to GDPR and other legislation.

Dave Randall, UK commercial director for Future plc, points out that “Privacy updates have and will fundamentally change the way brands buy media. There is a seismic shift coming to a market that has been inundated with made-for-advertising sites, click farms, contentious user-generated content and questionable third-party data.

“I believe premium publishers with professionally produced specialist content are in the best place to benefit.”

Effectively, the creation of content that Future and other digital media companies know appeals to their audiences provides the context for effective advertising. Those companies, with their vast array of acquisition and conversion data relating to their demographics, can serve up ads relevant to the content against which they appear.

Research has demonstrated that consumers are not averse to digital advertising provided it is of personal relevance, also that they are wary of “creepy” means of determining that relevance. That provides media companies with registration walls with a huge opportunity: they can square the circle between serving up salient marketing and preserving privacy.

“For advertising to be successful, it’s important to build an environment in which both readers want to spend time and advertisers want to invest,” according to Imogen Fox, chief advertising officer of Guardian Media Group. “Too many ad-funded sites place the volume of advertising over the experience that users have when they visit the site. This reduces the likelihood of audiences paying attention to the advertising and the effectiveness of the overall campaign.”

Damon Reeve is CEO of the Ozone Project, a collective of premium publishers leveraging the context of their owned-and-operated properties to sell ads at better rates than would otherwise be possible. He explains that “Advertising in context and with a creative message that is contextually relevant will always produce a better outcome for brand advertisers.

“The current programmatic model emphasizes audience targeting [out of context]. But, as third-party cookies deprecate, that will drive renewed interest in contextual targeting and creative message, which will benefit premium publishing.”

Clearing the hurdles

All of the above is, of course, contingent on a number of factors. For one thing, it is still easier said than done to sign consumers up. For all the progress digital publishers have made in refining their acquisition and retention strategies, even the most successful have registered only tiny fractions of overall internet users.

Moreover, many of those registered users have provided nothing but name, email, and the journeys they make while logged into sites. It’s far better than alternative – unregistered users – but far from the holistic view of a user to which advertisers have become accustomed.

Reeve elaborates: “Registered [and] paying readers create a much stronger data signal than anonymous readers, that creates a better return from advertising as we can provide better targeting and insight to advertisers. This will only strengthen when third-party cookies deprecate, and the gap widens between the quality of the data from registered/paying readers and anonymous readers.”

A second issue is that privacy concerns are not entirely eradicated with the deprecation of the third-party cookie. While the use of data clean rooms or efforts like the IAB’s ‘Seller Defined Audiences’ tool can ameliorate those issues, it still requires investment on the part of the paper or magazine to initialize and optimize.

So, while the very nature of a media brand’s website provides some measure of context to the ads that appear on there, publishers need to invest to truly make the most of it. Products like Piano claim that “value difference between users, pages, referral sources, and other channels is not just two or three times higher but hundreds of times higher” when users are registered – but that requires media companies to partner up or pay for access to those data tools.

Blended future

The reality is that, for most mass-market media brands, neither subscriptions nor advertising alone will sustain them. While subscriptions have come roaring back to the fore for digital publishers, advertising is still on par with subscription revenue in terms of their priorities.

Smart media leaders are therefore thinking about how the two revenue strategies synergize, rather than keeping them separate. Katie Le Ruez, director of digital, Guardian News & Media, explains: “As privacy changes come into force, brands will want to continue to reach relevant audiences at scale as they do today, so they will need to lean into alternative tech and the contextual targeting that it offers. Greater numbers of people visiting websites will be unreachable using traditional advertising technologies, and privacy-preserving tech often relies on contextual signals.”

“At the Guardian, we’ve been testing solutions that serve advertising to audiences who choose to ‘reject all’. We know that multiple ad tech vendors who traditionally offered brand safety solutions are now pivoting to offer contextual solutions too. This is a clear indication that contextual advertising will have greater value in future.” 

And Randall believes that “Contextual advertising will return as a key pillar for brands to connect with audiences authentically. Alongside intelligent first-party data solutions, publishers and advertisers can further collaborate to make the future of advertising more effective and transparent”.

So, while the spray-and-pray approach to contextless digital advertising is unlikely to go anywhere, there is an alternative for more discerning advertisers. Just as the ads that appeared in print magazines and papers benefited from the context of the content around them, so too do the ads that appear on publishers’ websites. Combine that with the first-party data to which they have access, and those titles are poised to further differentiate themselves from the non-premium contextless adverts bought and sold on the wider web.

The post Digital media’s successful symbiosis of subscription data and advertising appeared first on Digital Content Next.

A report into the state of local news in the UK from Enders Analysis and the News Media Association pulls no punches. It is clear about the extent to which local news publishers did not benefit from advertising spend moving from print to digital. It’s also candid about the likelihood of titles foregoing print entirely in the near future.

However, the report goes well beyond rehashing the impact of technology on the news media business. While it clearly sets the stakes for the industry, the report, “Signs of local life: a new phase for local media” also focuses on opportunities and collaborative strategies for local publishers as we move forward.

The authors note that “publishers have done very little to transition habitual paying print readers—or the next generation—into habitual paying digital audiences”. It also points out that local media have lost the war on digital classifieds and have no realistic path back to reclaiming that revenue.

That is exacerbated by other challenges facing print media. From higher production costs to the “effective monopoly” of the two major distributors, the ability to print and disseminate dailies and weeklies is becoming strained. The report states it expects the number of titles that go digital-only in the next decade will be greater than the previous 10 years.

As a result of that—and the absolute dominance of tech giants in digital advertising—the report states that appetite for external investment is limited: “No one in the industry would deny all this decline has driven investment sentiment away from the sector, and consequently depressed the value of local and regional media.”

Green shoots

But rather than being solely self-flagellation, the report highlights some of the irreplicable strengths of the UK local news industry. Owen Meredith, chief executive of the NMA explains that, “while clearly everything isn’t rosy, there are some positive signs of life. There is innovation there; DC Thomson [for example] is really good at building a membership model and subscription model that genuinely works in local news.”

As the report makes plain, the greatest strength of the local news industry is the direct relationship it has with its audience, and the trust that flows from its original journalism. It states: “At one time all of these distinctions were obvious because they were visible in the physical world: print was plainly different from other content and consumption. Online, these distinctions evaporate.”

So, the report argues that the local media industry needs to “shout these distinctions from the rooftops” particularly in the emerging era of generative AI-created content. Local news has provenance and personality. The report makes the argument that it will be difficult if not impossible for AI-generated content to take its place. In an age where the amount of noise online is to grow exponentially, local news media can provide the signal.

Meredith says local publishers like Newsquest are already set-up to take advantage of that trend: “We’ve got these huge scale audiences… there’s been a perception that a lot of that was driven by non-core local news.

“Actually, there is more data coming to light now… that you really do have deep engagement, multiple pageviews, reasonable penetration and good scroll-through. People are actually coming to local news sites for the local news product.”

That is in line with the recommendation by the report that local publishers move from pursuing digital advertising based solely on scale: “Too much revenue today is reliant on low-yield programmatic advertising” which has diminishing returns—particularly for the newspapers.

Show me the money

In order to survive to take advantage of that strength, however, local news organizations need time and investment, particularly around tech. Meredith says: Tech is a big-ticket item for a lot of smaller publishers. You can’t therefore do everything you might want to do at once. But I think you can do phased-based tech and there’s a lot of off the shelf solutions, frankly, that provide publishers with answers without massively excessive investment required.”

Given the long-term forecasts for ad spend and a lack of philanthropic support in the UK, the report suggests a number of alternative sources of funding.

In line with earlier recommendations from the Cairncross Review, the Enders report points out that direct government funding is basically impossible for any independent press that seeks to hold the government to account. Instead, it suggests alternatives that include more government advertising (already the largest single source of local advertising revenue across its many departments) with the local press.

Meredith concurs with this assessment, stating: “We think a genuine commercial exchange on advertising is fundamentally different to subsidy. We firmly believe that there is a long-term sustainable future for local news in a commercial way.

“We’ve been talking about the digital markets bill for ages. It’s not a silver bullet, but it will certainly help. There’s lots of elements but you [can] combine that commercial vitality without government subsidy or intervention, as well as the Competition and Markets Authority getting out of the way and allowing market consolidation to happen”.

Meredith is also keen to point out that the BBC has a key role to play in the future of the local press. It is a wholly unique organisation by any media standards, and Meredith argues that if it were proposed today its free-to-access nature means it would be immediately shot down by competition authorities. He advocates for a resetting of the relationship between the local press and the BBC, both through the BBC Local Democracy Reporting Service and other means.

Ultimately, the conclusion of the Enders Analysis report is that local news in the UK needs to make itself attractive to investment from outside the industry. That will be like ripping off a sticking plaster, as it has been resistant to change for years – for a variety of reasons. Executives at the major publishing houses have been accused of riding the slow decline of tested revenue sources in service of their payouts, for example.

True change in order to attract investment will require, as both Meredith and the Enders report advocate, collaboration and collective agreements in order to reach sustainability.

The post Change, lots of it: Enders Analysis on saving local news in the UK appeared first on Digital Content Next.