Over the past few years, publishers have seen formerly reliable sources of traffic like Google and Facebook dry up, with no new platforms on the horizon to make up for that loss. Shifts in user behavior and changes in algorithms have left publishers scrambling to respond across both search and referral channels. And with the rise of generative AI-enabled search, the ability to find new sources of referral traffic and build a loyal audience has become even more critical for publishers.
To gain a better understanding of how traffic declines are affecting them and the steps they’re taking to address challenges, Arc XP partnered with Digiday to survey 115 publishers for the report The state of publisher traffic: Framing the evolution and impact of search and referral in 2024. We asked about the referral traffic trends they’re seeing, how those trends have impacted their revenue, and the steps they’re taking to either rebuild their traffic or find other ways to reach and grow their audience.
In this article, we’ll focus specifically on what we heard from publishers about their referral traffic from social media platforms (like Facebook and TikTok), news aggregators (like Apple News), and other third-party platforms (like Reddit).
Publisher referral traffic trends in 2023
Referral traffic is an important revenue driver for publishers, with 98% of survey respondents saying that referral traffic has a moderate or very significant impact on their annual revenue. But 2023 proved to be a challenging year for publisher referral traffic, with most survey respondents saying they experienced a 1% to 20% decline.
The publishers in our survey experienced traffic declines across the major social media channels. Respondents named Facebook as a channel where they expect continued declines (82%), followed by YouTube (67%) and TikTok (57%). Given Meta’s announcement that it will de-prioritize news content on its platforms, the decline in referral traffic from Facebook is not surprising. And across all social platforms, opaque changes to algorithms have made it difficult for publisher content to stand out among the vast array of options presented to users.
According to survey respondents, the primary ways referral traffic decline impacts their revenue are decreased advertising ROI (63%) and changes in collaborations with brands, influencers, or other publications (54%). They also cited a change in competitive positioning, change in quality of audience, and a decline in social media engagement (each named by 43% of respondents).
How publishers are responding to referral declines
When asked what challenges they face around responding to the trend of declines in referral traffic, 54% of respondents named building/maintaining strong relationships with external platforms as a challenge. This was followed by adapting to social media trends (52% of respondents). Accurately pinpointing referral sources (49%) and constantly changing algorithms and updates (46%) were also top challenges.
Despite these challenges, the publishers we surveyed are forging ahead with tactics to combat referral traffic decline, including experimenting with new forms of video content and increasing their presence across social channels. 81% of respondents said they are experimenting with live streams and long-form video content, and 70% said they are focusing on short-form original vertical video for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram.
Long-form video content will ultimately offer publishers more control over monetization options than short-form videos created specifically for social channels. With long-form videos, publishers can incorporate in-depth reporting that sets them apart from other content sources and encourages deeper reader engagement and return visits.
The “pivot to video” isn’t new for publishers. Unfortunately, they’ve been burned before by making big bets on video content that didn’t pan out. This time around, publishers need to think carefully about what they want to accomplish with their video strategy: is it about getting advertising revenue from the videos? Driving readers from other channels to their website? Or creating longer-term audience relationships?
Surprisingly, only 56% of respondents said they are increasing direct-traffic efforts (newsletters, owned podcasts, etc.). Given the inherent unpredictability of social platforms, all publishers would benefit from thinking about how they can build more direct connections with their readers.
Publisher referral traffic expectations for 2024
When publishers look ahead to 2024, they are optimistic that referral traffic will rebound. Most of the publishers we surveyed expect referral traffic to increase by 1% to 20% this year, a trend that will likely driven by newsworthy events like the summer Olympics and the U.S. presidential election.
Publishers’ cautious optimism about 2024 might also reflect confidence in the tactics they’re implementing to combat referral traffic declines. But with platform changes and user behavior shifts it’s likely that referral traffic will never fully rebound to previous levels. Publishers will need to continue exploring ways to boost traffic across all channels, including owned channels that enable direct connections with readers.
When aspiring journalists ask me whether the media is dead, I always say no.
I remind them that while the menu might change, the hunger for news and information never vanishes. To stick with the food analogy, news these days is like UberEats: far more options are available at your fingertips.
Here’s the thing: evolution in the media is constant and ongoing.
Historically, the delivery method has evolved in this industry, from horseback to telegraph and radio to television. Cable news, the internet and social media caused disruptive waves over time. These days, news is on a 24-hour cycle that is no longer limited to cable news. And, now, Artificial Intelligence has entered the chat. (And they are here whether we like it or not.)
Newsrooms ignore the emergence of AI at their peril, as history shows that transformative technologies don’t disappear simply because they’re ignored. Remember in 1995 when Newsweek predicted the Internet would fail? It was already decades into its inevitable march to dominate media consumption.
Technology usually gets better in time, and it has only improved in my 22 years in this industry. We have a greater reach than we could have imagined. I can instantly read what’s happening in any part of this country—or the world. All from a device that fits in my pocket.
Technology and journalism will always travel hand-in-hand. However right now, a lot about the relationship is toxic. It’s not serving us and we need to do some soul searching to fix what’s not working.
Change can be a painful experience
News and information is everywhere, and everyone can share their perception of news. It’s transforming in real time and the growing pains are unrelenting.
The year started with over 500 journalists losing their jobs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. About 2,681 journalism jobs were eliminated in 2023 alone. That’s a 48% increase from 2022 and a staggering 77% increase from 2021.
Circulation, viewership and listeners have steadily declined for newspapers, broadcast TV news, and public radio. Major online news outlets are trying to stave off website traffic and engagement decreases. The shift to social media platforms for news consumption is particularly noticeable among younger generations. All this before we get to the fallout from tarnished community trust and news avoidance.
Everyone is looking for sustainability.
Same old traffic metrics
Meanwhile, social media referral traffic has plummeted globally over the past two years.
The big picture: News organizations invested heavily in social media for two decades, relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X, but the algorithms were not in our favor. They never loved us half as much as we loved them. We infiltrated these platforms, but social media prioritized advertising over truth and accountability.
Now, logic tells us that AI search could be a death knell for search traffic. Search has served as a major entry point for metrics that have helped newsrooms drive advertising revenue. Audiences have grown accustomed to using Google searches to find links to information. AI, however, can directly answer most questions, and it’s getting smarter by the hour.
The WSJ has reported that publishers might lose 20-40% of their website traffic when Google’s AI products are fully implemented. The loss of traffic from social media and search will likely have devastating effects on this industry.
Some local shops still rely on the same old metrics – the volume of web traffic and the value of a click or pageview – because that’s what we’ve always done. But given how much the landscape has changed, that well is drying up and we need to find a new source.
Rather than wait and see and react to the technological changes coming at us, the industry must redefine its relationship with technology and take some control. Some news organizations have come to terms with this, and others see the value in creating new revenue streams. Diversifying revenue sources is key.
But beyond that, the industry has to be more entrepreneurial and less traditional. Doubling down on the old models is simply not enough.
When we think about rebuilding the infrastructure for news, we should ask ourselves: Could we build our own pipeline to traffic? Is there a way we can empower audiences to share content by building a trusted social media platform for distribution? That’s the thing: We – the news and media industry – have to take responsibility and build the infrastructure we need to create new habits for readers.
Provide audiences with utility
The reality is that news organizations have done a decent job building brand presence across platforms, but there’s no measurement for the value of that. Unfortunately, our success is housed under decaying pillars of success. The entire model must be flipped on its ear. We must reimagine everything. That mindset is why some startups have done more than survive and become a new breed of media success story. There’s a there there.
We spend a lot of time curating audiences we already have and need to spend more of our days figuring out how to capture the ones we don’t. Live events, office hours and panel discussions center the news and make it accessible to more people. It’s a way to expand your brand in a three-dimensional way. Lean into your personalities and their subject matter expertise to establish a more potent value proposition. And recognize that not all change is bad. The trick is harnessing it in ways that attract and satisfy audiences.
We must pay closer attention to evolving media consumption habits. Some people do have shorter attention spans and want brevity. However, that’s not absolute; there’s room for it all.
We use our phones to do everything and email is a new form of currency. Delivering news to a consumer’s inbox via newsletters just makes sense. We have to develop content creation and delivery strategies that fit today’s lifestyles. And then be ready to do it again as things inevitably change.
Newspapers are going the way of the tablet—not the ones Apple makes, but the ones Moses carried when he descended from Mount Sinai. Hieroglyphics, papyrus and wood had a place in history, as did quill pens. We can appreciate Johannes Gutenberg’s contribution and still embrace all the waves of technology that followed.
Diverse perspectives
The pandemic showed us that people need the expertise journalists wield. However, at the same time we see that people increasingly value the perspectives of social media influencers over journalists. We may not like it, but this needs to teach us something. Rather than ask our journalists to be invisible or unobtrusive, perhaps we need to re-examine ways to humanize them for audiences.
The plethora of free options suggests that every media outlet needs to focus on offering more distinctive coverage. No, it shouldn’t be harmful or polarizing. But it has to be inclusive, reflecting more communities that demand to be heard. That’s why so many niche and local publishers have cropped up; to fill a void that was created by arrogance, neglect and an unwillingness to change – a poisonous recipe.
Media has to marry new technology, develop a trustworthy infrastructure for news distribution and create a steady diet of distinctive coverage mixed with utility and expertise and get back into communities.
The media landscape will look different by the end of this year (and the next, and the one after that), but you can’t point to a time in history when information didn’t matter. And you cannot point to a time in civilization when news – no matter its platform – didn’t make a difference.
If we haven’t learned anything else, history tells us we should pay attention.
n the rapidly evolving digital landscape, content producers constantly seek new ways to engage with audiences and promote their brands. That’s especially important right now as traffic continues to fall from sites such as Facebook and Twitter/X.
One weapon in their arsenal with some powerful potential is LinkedIn, a site that may offer a higher likelihood of referrals and engagement than some publishers have historically considered.
2. LinkedIn users tend to be millennials and professionals
LinkedIn is typically described as a social network for business professionals. As a result, it doesn’t yet attract much of Gen Z, but it is a site they transition to as they enter the workforce. Worldwide, 60% of users are in the advertiser-friendly 25-34 age bracket.
In the USA, a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 40% of 30-49-year-olds had used the site. That’s on a par with Pinterest (40%), TikTok (39%) and WhatsApp (38%) and some way ahead of Twitter/X (27%) and Snapchat (30%), platforms many publishers continue to invest considerable energies in.
3. Around 1 in 5 American users harness LinkedIn for news
Further data from Pew finds that 17% of U.S. adults using LinkedIn regularly get their news on the platform. Interestingly, in contrast to other social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest gender parity among news consumers.
Its news audience is not huge, c.5% of U.S. adults. However, this is on par with Snapchat (4% of the total adult population) and WhatsApp (3%).
The site also offers a more educated demographic, 60% of regular news consumers on LinkedIn have a college degree, and just over half (53%) of their users enjoy a household income over $100k per annum. For many media companies, these are appealing demographics.
Many media companies will already be using some of the most obvious functions on LinkedIn. This includes posting job ads, sharing company news and creating business landing pages.
Those functions will continue to be useful. However, they only scratch the surface of some of the wider potential the site potentially affords publishers and creators.
Tactics for publishers to try on LinkedIn:
1. Publish newsletters
Image via The Economist on LinkedIn. Screenshot 3/18/24.
“In the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 150% increase in the number of newsletters being published by publishers and journalists on the platform,” Axios reports.
These newsletters might be native to LinkedIn, offer a remix of content produced elsewhere, or simply be republished on the platform. Audiences can read them on the site, or have them emailed to them. Either way, they can potentially reach large, professional, audiences. Users have more than 450 million newsletter subscriptions on the platform. That’s up 3x year-on-year.
The Wall Street Journal’s Careers & Leadership newsletter, for example, has nearly 3 million subscribers and over 100 editions on LinkedIn. With the WSJ’s company page enjoying 9.7 million followers, that’s a high percentage of users who are digging deeper.
Another LinkedIn behemoth, The Economist, reaches over 3.1 million weekly subscribers with its “week ahead” newsletter, while Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Week reaches over 5 million subscribers with a short article that takes just 1-2 minutes to read.
The pandemic demonstrated the potential for publishers to livestream events. Although we have seen a renewed interest in the ability of in-person events (particularly to diversify revenues), many media companies have retained an online component. Some media providers, like Harvard Business Review, continue to run live events that remain 100% virtual.
The Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit & sponsor list, via Forbes
Online-only, or hybrid events, are more inclusive, helping to overcome geographic boundaries. But they also present additional income streams.
Forbes, for example, attracted several blue-chip sponsors for their Sustainability Leaders Summit last Fall. If you were unable to attend in person, you could view a live stream on various platforms, including LinkedIn, sponsored by Toyota.
Events, newsletters and posts by a company – or its staff – offer multiple means to engage with users on LinkedIn. Aside from blasting them with news and information, they’re also a space to dig beyond the analytics to garner insights from your audience.
As Meredith Turits, the former editor of BBC Worklife – a vertical that includes the Worklife 101 newsletter – explained to Nieman Lab last year “content that does well is, of course, shared and clicked on, but some of our most important insights come from the comments on the newsletter,” she said. “We’re always looking at conversation in the comments or shares.”
These audience insights can shape future editorial efforts. Moreover, by sharing content that stimulates discussion and offers insights from LinkedIn members, publishers can act as a convener for conversation. That’s an approach in line with the goal of many publishers to move beyond scale by developing direct relationships with audiences.
“Don’t treat it as a traffic play, full stop,” Turtis advises. “One of the things that’s most unique about LinkedIn is that people want to talk, and will talk — it’s UX makes that easy and encourages it.”
4. Drive referrals, subscribers and registrations
Posts on company pages, the feeds of the people who work at them, as well as newsletters published on LinkedIn, can all play a role in encouraging audiences to dig deeper.
USA Today’s weekly consumer news newsletter, The Money, breaks down stories from the past week, and includes links to other USA Today stories. It also highlights that you can sign up for a daily newsletter offering more of the same, more often.
Other outlets, like CNN’s PM Plug In, lean into when audiences might be using LinkedIn. In this instance, providing “a weekday newsletter to catch you up on important news you may have missed during your busy day.”
Meanwhile, Business Insider uses the platform to offer a “shorter version of our flagship newsletter,” which they then encourage readers to sign up for.
The Economist ends their newsletter with a registration link offering three free articles a month, as well as linking to their main subscription page.
Collectively, these approaches demonstrate some of the different ways that publishers are using LinkedIn to support their wider engagement and revenue strategies.
5. Humanize your brand and staff
In some instances, LinkedIn may be your first engagement with a company. A good initial impression can matter, therefore, in terms of attracting potential consumers, subscribers and prospective employees.
Because of this, some media companies are making their LinkedIn presence more personal and approachable.
The Editor’s Digest, a newsletter from the Financial Times, sees an editor pick their top stories from the FT that week. Each hyperlinked newsletter is simply signed off by the author using their first name (e.g. Patrick, or Roula). It offers a casualness one might not expect from such an august brand, even if I personally would love to know their surname and job title!
Elsewhere, Nicholas Thompson the CEO of The Atlantic publishes a monthly newsletter that highlights his picks of The Best Things To Read. Most of this content is from places outside of The Atlantic, increasing its usefulness and making it feel much less like a PR exercise. Thompson also posts casual hot-take videos on different topics, which also makes him – and by osmosis his publication – more accessible and relatable.
Moving forward
According to Daniel Roth, LinkedIn’s Editor in Chief, the platform works with 400 preferred news partners to help maximize their work on the site. These efforts, as Axios reports, include sharing trending topics with partners so that they can tap current audience interests, as well as featuring content on LinkedIn News.
However, for content creators not in this club, there are still multiple things you can do to leverage LinkedIn more effectively. Journalists can get free training on how to use the platform, as well as a free premium membership. They can also use the platform to promote their work, and the work of others, as well as engage directly with audiences.
Your digital and social teams can – and should – do that too. Newsletters, events and posts can create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with LinkedIn’s professional user base. In doing this, outlets may reach new audiences as well as serve existing ones. That can drive traffic and engagement, increase subscriptions and take-up of other products.
Image via Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
As a result, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more media companies are investing in LinkedIn. A survey of 314 media leaders in 56 countries, revealed that four in ten (41%) of executives said they would be putting more effort into the platform in 2024. This is only just behind the proposed prioritization in YouTube and Google Search.
As Sara Fischer the senior media reporter at Axios recently put it, “LinkedIn alone won’t be able to make up for the dramatic reduction in traffic referrals from social media sites to news publishers, but it does offer outlets and journalists a platform to meaningfully grow their audiences amid a broader tech crackdown on news content.”
Put another way, as the tech journalist Ryan Broderickoutlined earlier this week, “the traffic firehose days of the 2010s aren’t coming back. And LinkedIn is not the secret to infinite pageviews.” But, he adds, “finding a home for news publishers in 2024 isn’t about finding a perfect fit, but rather finding one that’s close enough.”
For some content creators and media companies, that might just mean leaning more into LinkedIn in the year ahead.
From Google to Facebook and Instagram to TikTok (and so many more), publishers have spent the last couple of decades chasing their audiences from one platform to another—only to be betrayed by changing algorithms and shifting platform priorities. For years, popular wisdom held that you had to go where the audience is. Now, despite the fact that audiences (particularly younger ones) seek out news and information on social platforms, those platforms are “backing away” from making that content visible. But regardless of a media brand’s position on social media, search has remained the undisputed path to traffic.
Now, publishers face a whole new threat: generative AI search. Years of fine-tuning search engine optimization strategies may all be for naught as Google embraces AI-driven answers in lieu of links to relevant content. Meanwhile, Gartner predicts that traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by 2026 as users shift to AI chatbots and virtual agents for their answers.
The Wall Street Journal reports that publishers expect a 20% to 40% drop in their Google-generated traffic if the search giant rolls out its AI search tool to a broad audience. So, what are media executives supposed to do in the face of yet another shift in the technology landscape that threatens to put them on the outs once again? There’s really only one solution: devise a plan to regain control of their audience relationships once and for all.
Discovery: a problem as old as algorithms
AI search has yet to reach its full potential, but referral traffic is already taking a hit. AI-driven search results that fail to link to the content they scrape from is just one part of the problem. Searchers are often satisfied with AI “answers” and have little need to click through for more. And platforms from across the web are trying to keep more users within the walls of their gardens, and that means the likes of Facebook and Google have gone from partners in traffic acquisition to the opposition.
“We’re seeing an industry in real crisis,” says Jim Chisholm, a news media analyst. While Chisholm says he is not seeing evidence that AI is impacting traffic just yet, that does not mean publishers are not already feeling the squeeze from elsewhere.
Liam Andrew, Chief Product Officer at The Texas Tribune, says that while his team expects generative AI to impact search traffic, they are still waiting to see a substantial impact. The bigger problem facing the Tribune now is social media traffic or the lack of it.
While social platforms across the spectrum are pulling the rug out from under publishers, our old friend search is slowly changing the rules of the game. “Search is still working,” Andrew says. The Texas Tribune sees that explainers and guides still drive traffic and even subscriptions. However, other sites have not been so lucky.
Back in October 2023, Press Gazette found that of 70 leading publishers, half saw their search visibility scores drop—and 24 of those saw double-digit dips. That was the result of one update—more bad news is certain to follow as new updates make their way to the masses.
AI bots: To block or not to block
Publishers may be preparing for a more significant battle when it comes to traffic. However, right now, there’s another fight on their doorsteps: bots are crawling their sites and using their work to train the AI poised to steal their traffic. Some are already taking steps to stop the free—and possibly illegal—use of their content. The Reuters Institute found that 48% of the most widely used news websites across 10 countries blocked OpenAI’s crawlers by the close of 2023. Far fewer—just 24%—blocked Google’s AI crawler.
For Andrew and The Texas Tribune, blocking AI crawlers is not a major concern. They already have an open-republishing model and are used to seeing their content scraped and used on other sites (often without the requested attribution). “It improves our readership and impact, but we compete with ourselves for SEO,” he says. He also says they see versions of their stories on news sites where the content is entirely AI-written. However, it is “not affecting our core audience traffic,” according to Andrew. So — at least for now — The Texas Tribune is not planning to block the bots.
Meanwhile, Google is reportedly paying publishers to use its AI tools to write content. While in the short term, this may offer (smaller) publishers relatively small sums as well as an easier way to create low-lift content, like other Google News Initiative (GNI) projects, there’s an underlying concern that Google is not focused on publisher health in the long term.
Developing a direct-to-reader strategy
As Andrew and the product team at The Texas Tribune look toward a less search-dependent future, they are changing strategies. For 2025 and beyond, “we are not going to be focusing on a really good SERP [Search Engine Results Pages] unnecessarily,” Andrew says. Instead, they’ll focus on products built directly for readers.
“Newsletters have been part of our model for over 10 years. It’s nothing new, but we’re continuing to see success with it,” Andrew says. Not only do the newsletters still drive traffic, but they also drive conversions. Subscribers become members at a higher rate, vital to a publication that does not depend on paywalls for revenue.
DCN conducted an informal survey on concerns around the impact of AI search on traffic, and while the sample size may not hold up to scientific scrutiny, it was clear that newsletters are a crucial tactic for publishers looking to own their audiences. Other stats suggest this is a good move. Storydoc research found that 90% of Americans subscribe to at least one newsletter. That number goes up for younger audiences as 95% of Gen Z, Millennials, and even Gen X receive newsletters, compared to 84% of Baby Boomers.
Experiment with engagement approaches
The solutions to the Google problem don’t end at email, though.
“We also have a big robust event system,” Andrew notes. The Texas Tribune holds dozens every year. They range from “pre-gaming the Texas primary” to deep dives into transportation in the Austin/San Antonio area. They gather experts and pundits to share their expertise on topics that interest readers. The team also live-streams these events — a universally important tactic for engaging younger, more diverse audiences. These events also turn out to be effective for converting casual readers into subscribers and members.
Andrew alluded to products his team is working on that are still under wraps. Still, it’s clear that, like many publishers, The Texas Tribune is preparing for a future when search no longer drives most traffic.
Chisholm thinks mobile apps are another excellent direct-to-reader strategy, and research backs this up. Pew reports that “A large majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 56% who say they do so often. This is more than the 49% who said they often got news from digital devices in 2022 and the 51% of those who said the same in 2021.” Cultivating a relationship with readers through their mobile devices—where you can use push notifications and other native capabilities to grab their attention—will likely be one of the many tools publishers must deploy going forward.
“I’ve been in the news industry – which I love – for 48 years. Now we are at a crossroads,” says Chisholm. “Either we choose the road to recovery, rebuilding relationships with our readers, or we continue down the road we are on, subject to algorithms, more confusion between legitimate news and social media infested with AI nonsense.”
Social platforms and creator-generated content are undeniably popular among audiences. In particular, digital-native platforms and individual creators resonate strongly with younger demographics, who increasingly consume content on mobile devices. A newly released study, 50 Richest Content Creators, highlights this dynamic and the rise of digital content creation. The report examines the earnings, follower count, efficiency, and platform preferences of the top 50 creators, offering a comprehensive view of the growing creator economy.
From June 2022 to June 2023, the top 50 social media content creators collectively earned $700 million. With a combined follower count reaching 2.92 billion, these creators average an impressive $239.68 per 1000 followers. Digital media companies must examine creator-generated content and identify what appeals to their target demographics. Understanding this appeal and relevance is crucial for media businesses to capitalize on new content opportunities.
Top performers and platforms
The study highlights TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram as these influential creators’ primary platforms. TikTok emerges as the frontrunner, commanding 40% of the total followers (1.2 billion), followed by YouTube at 24.8% (724.8 million) and Instagram at 22% (642.2 million). Interestingly, most creators are millennials (56%), followed by Gen Z (40%) and Gen X (just 4%).
Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, is the highest-earning creator, earning $82.3 million and having 377 million followers. Others like Rhett & Link, Preston Arsement, and Ryan Kaji follow closely, each earning $35 million and having follower counts of 51 million, 39 million, and 36 million, respectively.
Elliot Tebele, the founder of FJerry LLC and a prominent figure in meme culture, expands beyond content into business ventures ‒ board games and Jaja tequila. He has a total of 25.6 million followers across platforms and earns $1,172.20 per 1,000 followers, amounting to $30 million in earnings in 2023. Tebele’ brand extension and business ventures showcase cross-over opportunities in other business verticals.
Diving into the creator economy
The report highlights key areas for media companies to explore when navigating the creator content ecosystem. Examining each area will help formulate a media brand’s creator content strategy to best align with evolving consumer behaviors and preferences.
Platform preference: Understanding why top content creators favor certain platforms shows the shifting dynamics of social media. User trends, engagement, and content consumption highlight the potential for audience reach and monetization.
Generational trends: Identifying the breakdown of top creators by generation sheds light on the demographics of content creators and their audience. Marketers can use these profiles to target their products and services to specific demographics.
Economic impact: Analyzing content categories will help identify broad and niche categories and new opportunities. This will also provide earnings by top content creators.
Monetization metrics: Analyzing “Earnings per 1K Followers” to provide information on how effectively creators monetize their content and audience. This metric is a clear and powerful sign of a creator’s talent in turning their audience into valuable financial returns because getting the most value from followers is crucial.
Global perspective: While the data predominantly focuses on creators from the U.S. (representing 80% of the top 50 creators), understanding these trends can be crucial for international expansion.
Embracing and leveraging creator content enables media companies to enhance their competitiveness within the digital landscape. Careful analysis, identification, and alignment of appealing creator content can deepen audience engagement and loyalty. Furthermore, creator content presents opportunities for revenue generation through partnerships and sponsorships, providing avenues for diversifying revenue streams.
As publishers look for ways to accelerate audience growth, engagement, and monetization in 2024, they have a multitude of options for driving change and innovation. Last year I worked with Nick Nyhan, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Upside Analytics, to develop a model for roadmapping the innovation journey in the publishing industry. As part of that effort, we uncovered some key strategies and ideas that publishers can use to accelerate their organizational velocity in the coming year across three areas: audience growth, audience engagement and monetization.
Grow audience reach
Most publishers are already working on the obvious top-of-funnel audience growth strategies, like social media and SEO. But we identified some opportunities beyond those obvious strategies that we encourage publishers to consider.
Idea #1: Add new sites or apps for specific audience segments
Breaking your audience down into sub-segments is a critical tactic for any publisher. When you’ve identified sub-segments with strong subjects of interest, you can build on that knowledge with more advanced strategies for targeted growth in each segment, including adding new properties.
A great example of this is Gray Television, one of the largest broadcasters in the U.S. Gray owns a large number of television stations across the country, and they decided to launch “City Weekend” sites in each of their local markets featuring location-specific lifestyle content on events, food, art and culture. This segmentation-based strategy helped Gray expand its audience, increase traffic, and boost ad revenue.
Following Gray’s example, you could identify a segment of your audience that’s very interested in sports, or local business, or any other specific topic, and introduce a microsite that’s easy to market to that audience.
Idea #2: Create mobile apps for fans
Your brand’s power users – the segments of your audience that engage with you the most – are also the most likely to download your mobile app. To take your mobile strategy to the next level, tailor your mobile app to hyper-engage your power users.
This presents the opportunity to align other elements of your business with your mobile strategy. For example, you can use your website mainly to attract, engage, register, and then drive new users to your mobile app, where you can employ additional strategies to keep them engaged.
Increase audience engagement
Once you’ve gotten your audience onto your site, you need to get them to stay there and have longer session lengths. More content views and more time on site equals more affinity to your brand.
Idea #3: Cater to multi-scenario consumption
People don’t just ingest news while sitting at a computer. They could be stuck in traffic and want an audio option. They could be on the go in a subway and need an offline mode. Some people want to save stories and listen to them later on audio or watch on video when they’re sitting in front of their TV at night. There is a lot of churn going on across all of these modalities, so publishers need a strategy to consciously cater to different audience scenarios for consuming content.
At the simplest level, this might involve letting users create reading lists of stories they can access later. At the most sophisticated level, you could have a completely native team building a custom OTT app. In between are opportunities to experiment with and test modalities for various content consumption scenarios, from podcasts to mobile to TV “sit back” options.
Idea #4: Use AI to suggest related stories
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents an exciting opportunity for publishers. In its current state, AI is well-positioned to take on some of the more tedious or repetitive tasks in content creation workflows. For example, AI-powered tools are emerging for auto-summarization and auto-tagging.
Your content creators like to write and create content. Maybe they don’t mind summarizing. But nobody likes tagging—so why not let AI tools do that work? Auto-tagging for text, video, images, and captions makes it easier to suggest related content to your audience, keeping them on your site longer and increasing the amount of content they consume.
Monetize by segment
Before you start trying advanced monetization strategies, make sure you have the basic building blocks in place. That includes the ability to enable and measure customer loyalty, clear calls-to-action across all of your properties, and an optimized checkout process. Beyond those basics, we identified some innovative strategies publishers are using to monetize audience segments.
Idea #5: Provide special content consumption options for subscribers
As I covered in the last section on audience engagement, your audience is consuming your content in many different scenarios, whether it’s sitting in front of a computer, on a mobile phone while on the go, or in front of their TV at night. Providing special consumption options that cater to these preferences can be used to entice people to subscribe.
For example, The Irish Times uses a text-to-speech provider to convert most of its stories into an audio version. A small headphones icon appears in the corner of these stories to indicate that an audio option is available—but only for subscribers. The Irish Times incurs a cost associated with doing the text-to-speech conversion. However, by enticing higher value users to subscribe, this cost is balanced out by the revenue gain.
Idea #6: Try a freemium approach
With a freemium strategy, publishers offer a selection of content that’s available without a subscription, but make higher-value content available only to subscribers. Readers are able to see headlines and short snippets of the high-value premium content featured amongst the free content, enticing them to subscribe to get full access.
We believe that sports-related content, especially if it’s local, will be among the highest value content that publishers can offer in the future. Sports-related stories would therefore be a great candidate to offer as premium content in a freemium model (and also a great testing ground for new monetization approaches).
Ultimately innovation for media companies comes down to having the courage to try, whether it’s one or more of these ideas, or any other tactics for growing your audience and increasing your revenue. We recommend crafting a one pager that outlines the new ideas you’ll test in 2024, including where you are today, where you want to go, and the KPIs you’ll use to measure your progress. Then share that document throughout your organization and take the next steps on your media innovation journey for 2024 and beyond.
