While we’ve seen shifts in consumer behavior over the past few years, they are now happening at an accelerated pace, which impacts those in the media and video entertainment sectors. Younger consumers, in particular, are moving away from traditional pay TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services, social platforms, and gaming. The rise of short-form, algorithm-driven videos offers an endless supply of free content that keeps users engaged for hours. These platforms excel in curating and promoting personalized experiences through AI and recommendation algorithms.
Thus, it won’t come as a big surprise that social platforms now account for more than half of U.S. ad spending, which positions them as major competitors to traditional media outlets. According to Deloitte’s Digital Media Trends 2025 Report, social platforms have become the new center of gravity in media, capturing both consumer attention and advertising dollars.
The report highlights that younger generations, especially Gen Z and millennials, are likely to cancel their cable subscriptions, citing high costs and frustration with the volume of ads. With cable bills averaging $125 per month, the appeal of traditional TV services is fading. For younger viewers, free content on social media and affordable, ad-supported streaming services provides a more cost-effective alternative to pricey cable packages.
As a result, pay TV subscriptions are declining steadily, dropping from 63% to 49% of U.S. households over the past three years. SVOD services now offer a wider range of options, including live sports, which once was a driving force for much of the pay TV market. Additionally, many users turn to social media for news and sports highlights, further eroding the traditional TV audience. consumer media habits include
Advertising landscape
With advanced ad tech and data analytics, social platforms dominate the global ad market. Deloitte’s research shows that ads on social media are more likely to influence Gen Z and millennials than ads on traditional TV or streaming services. The younger generations appreciate the relevancy and personalization of social media advertising. By comparison, ads on traditional media feel more intrusive and less targeted, which diminishes their effectiveness.
For traditional media companies, these trends present a significant challenge. Studios and streaming services increasingly turn to ad-supported subscription tiers to lower costs and attract a wider audience. However, these services still face an uphill battle in attracting advertisers away from the social platforms that dominate the digital ad space. The advertising capabilities of social platforms are advanced, as they leverage sophisticated algorithms and AI to target specific audience segments with highly relevant ads.
Streaming services
While streaming video services offer consumers a wealth of content, they have their own set of challenges. Rising subscription costs are creating dissatisfaction among users. The research shows that 41% of consumers feel that the content available on SVOD services is no longer worth their price. This is particularly evident as streaming costs rise—on average, SVOD subscribers pay $69 per month, a 13% increase from the previous year. Many consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, cancel services and jump from one streaming provider to the next in search of better value.
Moreover, the advertising-supported tiers of SVOD services have become a crucial part of many companies’ strategies to lower subscription costs while generating revenue. However, this model comes with trade-offs. While 54% of SVOD users say they subscribe to at least one ad-supported service, many express frustrations with the volume of ads. To compete, media companies must find a price point that works for consumers while balancing the needs of advertisers and content creators.
Content creator connection
Content creators have become a central force in the media landscape. Social platforms offer a new generation of influencers whose content drives engagement and shapes consumer behavior. For younger generations, creators are now as influential as traditional TV stars and movie actors. In fact, many consumers report feeling a stronger personal connection to their favorite creators than to the personalities they see on traditional TV. This trend is fueling the growth of social media platforms as major entertainment hubs.
This shift represents an opportunity to tap into the growing creator economy. By leveraging social media, media brands can engage audiences in new ways and tap into the influence and authenticity that creators bring to the table.
As social platforms and content creators continue to dominate the entertainment landscape, traditional media companies must reevaluate their content strategies and business models. The merging of social platforms, creators, and on-demand services is reshaping the media’s core. Media companies will need to adapt to the changing demands of consumers, who now expect more from their entertainment experiences.
For subscription-driven publishers, newsletters can be a valuable way of building relationships with potential paying readers. But it can be a challenge to effectively promote newsletters and justify the extra work required to create them. However, MIT Technology review has seen success with a portfolio of editorially-driven newsletters published across the week. Key to their growth strategy is effectively reusing the newsletter content online to drive sign-ups, and maximizing opportunities to promote the newsletters across all MIT activity.
“Once someone has signed up to our newsletters, they’re two or three times more likely to become a subscriber,” said Niall Firth, executive editor, newsroom at MIT Technology Review.
With newsletters forming a key part of the publication’s subscriber funnel, promotion and growth of these products is a priority. Here’s how MIT Technology review structures its newsletter portfolio and promotes sign-ups to begin building those vital reader relationships.
Using the editorial to go deeper
MIT Technology Review has a variety of editorial newsletters in their portfolio. The Download is a daily weekday newsletter that features short, snappy summaries of key stories. It also includes a quote of the day, links from around the internet, and a throwback to a feature story that was published during the last year.
MIT also offers a selection of weekly “beat” newsletters. AI newsletter The Algorithm publishes every Monday, led by AI and hardware reporter James O’Donnell. Energy and climate newsletter The Spark comes out every Wednesday, and The Checkup, focused on health and biotech news, is released on Thursdays. Editor in Chief Mat Honan then publishes The Debrief, an analysis of the biggest tech news story, every Friday.
In terms of editorial strategy, these newsletters begin with a full editorial piece of around 700 words, which can be used for scoops, analysis, or context around bigger stories. “These are written from scratch every week,” Firth explained. “[The writing] that goes in there is in there first, so if you sign up to a newsletter, you’ll get to read it before it appears anywhere else.”
The second half of these beat newsletters is used for other relevant links, news and bite-sized updates, as well as subscription upsells and event promotions.
Each beat newsletter is led by a named editor, as they find readers connect better with a person or expert. Editors are encouraged to be conversational. “They’re like your smart friend guiding you through [topics]. So, if something is complicated in the world of your beat, your reader can rely on them. They’re going to lay it all out to you and tell you what’s important, which bits you can ignore, what you should be aware of,” said Firth.
It also offers the opportunity to go behind the scenes in a way web-first articles don’t. Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review’s senior climate reporter and writer for The Spark newsletter was at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit recently, a conference dedicated to energy technology. For the newsletter, she wrote about what it was like to be there, and the undercurrents around emerging technology and climate change. “The vibes were weird,” she reported, using a more explanatory and informal tone than would normally be used for an article.
Publishing newsletters as stories
One of the key drivers of MIT Technology’s newsletter growth strategy is effective use (and reuse) of the content. Although newsletter articles are written first and foremost for the inbox, they are then republished the following day as a story on MIT Technology’s website, with a note pointing out that newsletter subscribers saw the story first.
This achieves an often tricky balance between offering newsletter readers exclusive content. It offers an exclusive window to subscribers, yet allows MIT to promote articles to as wide a readership as possible.
“Once they’re on the site, they get treated and promoted like every other story,” Firth said. He also pointed out that sometimes these newsletter-first stories do as well as, or even better than, standard web-first pieces.
When newsletter articles are published online, they appear with multiple notes about originally being published as newsletters, with sign-up boxes to capture interested readers. This also provokes a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out), and highlights that the value of the newsletter is in being the first to get relevant news.
MIT’s newsletter-first strategy lets the editors go deeper on stories that have already been published, as well as smaller or more timely scoops. Firth explained that there may be a big story from earlier in the week with off-cuts or reporting that didn’t fit into the story, but can be used as a whole new story for the newsletter. “That does double-duty: It’s cool to read an interview with a researcher on a topic that only got a line in the main story but is worthy of a whole separate interview. But then it calls back to the main story, and all fits together,” he said.
Although newsletter stories contain multiple calls-to-action (CTAs) for the relevant newsletter, Firth also noted that contextual newsletter sign-up boxes are promoted on relevant stories throughout MIT Technology’s site. Energy stories will have a promotion for The Spark, AI stories for The Algorithm, and so on. This means site visitors are given visible and frequent opportunities to sign up to newsletters, even on a first visit.
Linking newsletter strategy with events
Another tactic which has seen success in driving audience growth is visible promotion of newsletters at MIT events. The publisher has a stable of large-scale conferences and focused gatherings, from their flagship EmTech emerging technologies summit to digital leadership “classroom,” Future Compute.
“At all of our events, we have these massive boards in the lobby of the event. They have QR codes for all the different newsletters, with a specific UTM so we know it came from that event for that newsletter,” Firth outlined.
He explained that both new event registrants or new subscribers to the brand get a dedicated email about the newsletters they can sign up to. For example, a registrant for their EmTech AI conference would also get an email from James O’Donnell, newsletter writer for The Algorithm, showcasing their weekly AI deep dive.
Relevant newsletters are also promoted at online events, including webinars and live streams.
Other growth tactics
Firth outlined a number of other strategies used to grow their newsletter audiences. MIT Technology Review has a hard paywall for around a third of the stories on the site. But for stories promoted on social media platforms, the team will offer access in return for signing up to a related newsletter.
“On Instagram, if we have a new big feature around AI, we do Instagram Stories where the ‘front page’ of the story would be the article, and the second page is a sign-up box to The Algorithm to get access to it,” said Firth.
The team has seen success using this tactic with some more surprising platforms like Reddit, too. Firth noted that Reddit attracts people who want to go particularly deep into various topics, rather than surface-level technology coverage; an audience their newsletters suit well.
Last year, the publisher experimented with exit intent popups – banners that appear when a user looks like they’re about to click off the page. Firth shared that these drove 4,000 new sign-ups over the test period last year. They are hoping to roll out a wider test of exit intent popups this year.
In October last year MIT launched a free six-week limited series newsletter, Intro to AI. Newsletter courses like this can be a good way of letting potential readers sample work without committing to a more regular newsletter. Each newsletter in the course takes the opportunity to promote the Algorithm.
Chief Executive Officer and publisher Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau told A Media Operator that since launching, the course had attracted 17,000 subscribers with an average open rate of 57%. Now, the publisher is looking at other complementary areas to its regular beat newsletters, like healthcare.
MIT Technology review has also been experimenting with newsletter promotion swaps as part of its growth strategy. Axios and Semafor have been early partners for this, with newsletters exchanging ads for the other publication to attract interested audiences who are already engaged with newsletters.
Crucially, all newsletter promotions make it as simple as possible to sign up, with readers being asked for just their email address.
There’s no silver bullet or one tactic that will result in sustainable newsletter growth. MIT Technology Review’s approach is to ensure that beat newsletters are consistently promoted across relevant pieces online. Every opportunity is taken – from events to social stories – to funnel audiences into topical newsletters. It is this combined, holistic approach that fuels MIT’s success.
The transition away from traditional pay-TV is accelerating. In fact, traditional TV no longer dominates the video subscription market. By 2028, traditional pay TV’s share of video subscription revenues will decrease to just one-third. Meanwhile, digital pay-TV services, also known as virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), will increase their share from 13.2% in 2025 to 15.4% by 2028. These services, including YouTube TV, Fubo, and Sling TV, deliver linear TV content over the Internet, making them appeal to consumers seeking flexibility and lower costs than traditional pay TV.
Emarketer’s Digital Video and Trends report for Q1 2025 shows that streaming services are poised to achieve even greater growth, increasing their share of video subscription revenues by about eight percentage points by 2028. Notably, YouTube has become a significant player in the subscription business. While YouTube remains known for its free, ad-supported platform, its YouTube Premium and YouTube Music services collectively boast over 100 million subscribers. YouTube TV, which claimed 8 million U.S. subscribers in 2024, is also contributing significantly to the growth of digital pay TV.
Rising costs and consumer behavior
Although subscription revenues still dominate the streaming sector, rising prices are reshaping consumer behavior. In recent years, both traditional pay-TV and streaming services have raised prices, driven by inflation. However, streaming services have increased prices at a faster rate over the past two years, surpassing the cost growth of traditional pay TV. This price disparity has triggered consumer pushback, especially as streaming services introduce price hikes and clamp down on password sharing.
Streaming giants like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ employ strategies to boost profitability, including raising subscription costs and limiting account sharing. These actions, along with content cuts, have led to some consumer dissatisfaction. Despite these challenges, streaming services remain profitable on paper.
Among the streaming platforms, Hulu and Disney+ have made some of the largest price increases for their ad-free plans. While Apple TV+ stays relatively affordable, its library lags behind competitors. All the while, it has doubled its subscription price since launch.
Live sports drives subscription growth
Streaming services are capitalizing on the growing demand for live sports, which increasingly draws subscribers away from traditional TV. Major streaming platforms, such as NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Amazon Prime Video, continue to invest heavily in sports rights. This is further shifting the sports broadcasting landscape from traditional TV to streaming platforms. By 2027, digital sports viewership will surpass traditional TV viewership by 52 million viewers, signaling the ongoing transition in how consumers watch live sports.
YouTube TV’s growth and the digital pay-TV market
YouTube TV is seeing significant success among the growing digital pay-TV services. As traditional pay-TV continues to shed subscribers, YouTube TV is adding them at a steady pace. By 2026, it will become the largest pay-TV operator in the United States. Although YouTube TV is not yet profitable, it is an important player in the broader digital pay-TV market, now accounting for about one-fifth of total pay-TV subscription revenues.
The digital pay-TV market is also experiencing consolidation. In January 2025, Hulu + Live TV and Fubo TV announced a merger. Disney will hold a 70% stake in the new venture, with Fubo’s leadership overseeing operations. Although Hulu + Live TV and Fubo will remain separate offerings, this consolidation may lead to further streamlining of the digital pay-TV space.
Shifting streaming revenue streams: subscription vs. advertising
While subscriptions still represent the majority of revenue for streaming services, advertising is growing in importance. From 2023 to 2027, advertising’s share of total streaming revenues will increase by nearly four percentage points. This rise in ad spending reflects the growing significance of connected TV (CTV) platforms, a critical avenue for advertisers looking to reach consumers on streaming services.
In fact, CTV ad spending may exceed 15.8% year-over-year growth in 2025, outpacing the 10.6% growth forecast for U.S. streaming subscription revenues during the same period. However, both advertising and subscription revenues in traditional TV are in decline, though price increases for subscriptions help slow the rate of decline.
While this Emarketer report focuses on the U.S. market, it’s important to note that streaming services are also seeing significant growth worldwide. As of Q2 2024, nearly 60% of Netflix’s revenues come from outside of North America. While prices are lower in regions like Asia and South America than North America and Europe, the global growth potential for streaming services remains immense. Countries across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific are seeing high levels of subscription penetration, with streaming services continuing to expand their reach internationally.
The video subscription landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Traditional TV’s dominance is slipping as streaming services and digital pay-TV providers continue to capture an increasing market share. For media executives, this shift presents both challenges and opportunities.
Subscription revenue remains the primary source of growth for streaming services. Rising costs and consumer demand for more flexible, lower-cost options continue to shape the industry. At the same time, the increasing importance of advertising revenue, coupled with the global expansion of streaming platforms, offers new avenues for monetization. Staying ahead of these trends and adapting to the evolving market dynamics is key to maintaining a competitive edge in this rapidly changing ecosystem.
Gen Z gets a bad rap from the news industry. Whether it’s news avoidance, the refusal to pay, or the rise in following news influencers rather than media organizations, myriad issues make it challenging for publishers to build relationships with younger audiences. Yet young audiences will pay for products that add value to their lives.
The belief that younger audiences will engage – and even pay – for media products drove the foundation of Youthquake. Danuta Breguła, MD for Paid Products at Ringier Axel Springer Polska and Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis nv are the people behind the Substack publication that focuses on how publishers can connect with young people.
Crucially, it’s no longer the case that young people will simply “grow into” paying for news as they get older and have more disposable income. Nizet explained that this is a change that she’s seen over the 15 years she’s worked in journalism. “News is not a destination any more,” she observed. “[Young people] consume news between all the other cool things. That’s why platforms are really interesting for them, because they give you news, but also all the other stuff.”
Although the push to go directly to a news app or site may be lower, Nizet believes that younger audiences can be persuaded to pay for news. That belief drives her work every day at Mediahuis.
“You see that young people want to pay for a new skin in Fortnite, or something on Roblox, or a nice feature on Airbnb for example, because it inspires them, or triggers them,” she explained. “Why aren’t we able to find what triggers them [to pay] for something as important as independent journalism?”
Thinking beyond the article
One issue Nizet highlighted is that many news organizations still think in text and image. Even video on news sites is usually landscape with a clumsy play experience. “It’s not the experience that they have on other platforms, and there is really some space for us,” she emphasized.
Short-form video — in portrait for mobile viewing – is the preferred consumption format for 61% of Gen Z and young millennial consumers surveyed by the Reuters Institute. Short-form text was the next most popular (40%), with long-form text ranking third in young audiences’ preferences (32%).
One example is looking at explainer videos which perform well for creators and influencers. News brands are ideally placed to do well from these, but Nizet said that this requires journalists showing their faces. To engage young news audiences, “we need to show our vulnerability,” she outlined. “We need to show how much effort it is to create a really good article, that it’s not just some piece of content like an influencer unboxing something.”
Nizet pointed to Danish news publisher Zetland as an example of offering alternative formats. Zetland identified that many of its readers wanted to get an update on their commute, and didn’t necessarily want to be looking into their screens. They invested in building an audio app with journalists reading out their stories. Now, 80% of their audience consume the news that way, and 45% of their subscribers are in their 20s and 30s.
Building trust off-platform
As well as innovating around publishers’ own platform experiences, there is value in investing in a presence wherever younger people are, in order to build those relationships. French daily newsbrand Le Monde told Press Gazette that investing in content for primarily Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube had helped initiate relationships with new audiences, who they then saw become paying subscribers after two or three years.
Nizet noted that although the end goal of being visible on social media should be to tease audiences back to publishers’ own work, there is a bigger role at play. “We can show them [on social] what our journalism looks like, how trustworthy it is, how we show different perspectives, and how we make content that is relatable to their world,” she said. “That is what will make them pay for it.”
“They don’t want to pay for some instance that is preaching to them how they need to live their lives. That is often what we still have in traditional media: we are going to tell you how the world is, and how you should think. It worked for other generations, but it doesn’t work for [young people].”
Although younger audiences are more likely to turn to social media for news, they are also very distrustful of the information they find on it. A Gen Z Report from Oliver Wyman Forum & TNM found that Gen Z are almost twice as likely to fact-check news, but also that they trust people like them 2x as much as “mainstream” news outlets.
Another opportunity social platforms present publishers is the ability to engage and interact with young news audiences. This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Nizet noted that older generations also comment and read what others are saying with as much interest as the original content.
“We are not just senders, but we act like senders,” Nizet explained. “We see platforms as traffic drivers. But a platform can do so much more than just traffic building. It’s about building trust and engagement, and letting people get to know your journalism.”
Crucially, this requires a re-adjustment of who publishers assess as their competitors. “We’re not competing against [traditional] media any more,” Nizet pointed out. “We are competing against cat movies, and influencer drama… that is the real competition.”
There is a balance to be struck between investing in building audiences on platforms publishers have little control over, and showcasing work to build trust. Nizet draws a clear distinction in her work at Mediahuis. Off-platform is the hook, where the question should be how journalism can be showcased and trust can be build. On-platform is about the reward, the value, the exclusivity and the community.
Looking outside publishing for inspiration
However successful individual publishers might be at attracting younger audiences, Nizet believes that real change will come from looking outside the industry at what works in other areas. This is the focus of her and Breguła’s Youthquake newsletter, and a report on How publishers can grow with today’s youth.
“We really want to go beyond the obvious things. So for example how Taylor Swift or Red Bull can help us understand and monetize younger people,” Nizet said. “There’s also a link between content creators, influencers and news brands…which could offer you a totally different perspective as a journalist than what you are used to, and it can be so enriching.”
It’s a sentiment that Zetland CEO Tav Klitgaard echoed to The Publisher Podcast this week. “The product has to be much better,” he said, referring to news sites and apps. “You have to compete with Spotify and Instagram. You shouldn’t compete with a legacy print paper, and it seems like a lot of people in the media industry are still believing that’s [who] you need to compete with, which is just totally wrong. You need to compete with YouTube.”
A shift in thinking to engage young news audiences
Nizet is optimistic that publishers can build a relationship with younger audiences, even a paying one. She pointed out that there will always be a need for news, and that there is a lot of opportunity for those who can think outside the box.
Crucially, the answer to these challenges won’t come from the way publishers are used to doing things right now. “We need to shift how we think,” Nizet emphasized. “We don’t control the internet… but we can see how we can adapt to it in formats that [young people] like, and stories that they like and feel relatable.
“At some point, they will pay for it. I don’t mean when they are 30 or 35, I mean at the moment that they are feeling the value that we can offer them.”
Building a relationship where that value becomes evident to Gen Z is not a quick task. Strategies put in place now will take years to pay off, as with the example of Le Monde on social media. But it is a vital job that news publishers need to actively be planning for, if they want young audiences to pay for news in the future.
Subscriptions remain a vital revenue stream for most media companies, but the landscape is rapidly shifting. In response, publisher strategies also need to adapt and evolve.
The days of easy subscriber growth are over. To drive subscription growth, media companies must double-down on addressing core challenges such as churn, consumer fatigue, declining social referrals, and opportunities afforded by AI to sharpen their engagement strategies.
This will mean focusing on retention and maximizing lifetime value. Media organizations will also need to refine paywall strategies and offer flexible, engaging, experiences to ensure audiences keep coming back – and, ideally, keep paying for your content.
To better understand these trends, I reached out to four leading industry experts: Kevin Anderson, Peter Houston, Greg Piechota, and Madeleine White, and examined the latest insights from WAN-IFRA and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Here’s what you need to know.
Trend 1: Retention is king
“Publishers long ago converted the low-hanging fruit of their most engaged audiences to subscribers,” notes Kevin Anderson, Director Consulting Services at Pugpig. This is one reason why, as the latest Digital News report revealed, subscription growth has largely flattened.
Moreover, in an era of news avoidance and on-going declines in social media referrals, “the flow into the top of the conversion funnels is drying up,” Anderson adds. “Growth is getting harder to find.”
As a result, a focus on retention will a key priority for publishers in 2025. Afterall, as Greg Piechota, Researcher-In-Residence at the International News Media Association (INMA), reminds us, “you make more money with higher retention than with higher price.”
An emphasis on reducing churn and developing long-term customer relationships can be seen across the subscription economy. Recurly’s 2025 State of Subscriptions report found that return acquisitions account for 20% of new subscribers, underlining the value of retaining your audience.
Tactics to successfully do this include payment flexibility (e.g. weekly, monthly and annual plans), and the ability for users to pause a subscription, rather than cancel it.
Local newspapers like the Bangor Daily News in Maine, enable you to pause your print subscription when going on vacation. The New York Times offers something similar. Applying this principle to digital products may reduce cancellations and keep more consumers engaged long-term.
This matters because, as The Daily Beast discovered, subscribers are worth 18 times more than unknown users. And that figure grows to 169% when revenue from first-party data and advertising is taken into account across channels such as newsletters and apps.
Retention strategies therefore need to encompass your whole product stack. Newsletters, apps, podcasts and push notifications aren’t just pathways to conversion. They are a means to drive revenue and deepen audience loyalty across multiple touchpoints.
Trend 2: Harness AI to become truly audience-first
Media companies have talked about being “audience-first” for years, says Madeleine White. But a lot of this potential is unfulfilled, she contends. White, VP Marketing at Poool, and Editor In Chief and co-founder of The Audiencers, believes advancement in AI offers a means to finally deliver on this promise.
AI allows us to segment readers based on interests, engagement levels, and traffic sources. This means that media companies can move away from generic offerings to more personalized experiences that support subscription growth.
White points to TIME’s Person of the Year experience as a case in point. Through the use of Generative AI, audiences could consume the cover story through a range of formats. This included an audio version, a concise summary, an in-depth analysis, and the ability chat with an AI assistant about the winner, President Donald Trump.
“Instead of simply kind of creating this single form, the article becomes shapeless,” White says. “It can be transformed and controlled by each reader, which is basically what audience first, is all about.”
Through the use of Generative AI, audiences could consume the cover story through a range of formats.
Trend 3: AI-powered paywalls become commonplace
Dynamic AI-driven paywalls are nothing new. But they are growing in adoption and sophistication. And this evolution offers subscription growth.
As INMA’s Piechota explains, “publishers are using data and AI to tailor paywalls more precisely. This boosts conversion by predicting both each user’s and each article’s propensity to subscribe.”
Hearst USA is one such publisher adopting this more sophisticated approach. They worked with Mather Economics to create a machine learning model that uses 75 different variables to trigger actions designed to mitigate churn and engender long-term customer loyalty.
“The biggest challenges lie around putting this into practice,” White contends. Many “publishers are kind of trying to jump the gun and go straight to a very machine learned AI based model,” she says. She recommends a more incremental approach. Articles that provide unique value should sit behind a paywall, White suggests. More “commodity content” can be open to all, in order to get as much advertising revenue as possible.
Argentina’s Clarín, the Spanish-language newspaper with the largest number of digital subscribers in the world, is already adopting this approach. As outlined by Spanish journalist and consultant Ismael Nafría, hindering access to what Clarin calls “decisive articles” is essential to persuading audiences to subscribe. The publication seeks to publish 10 to 12 of these kinds of articles per day.
Trend 4: Bundling 2.0
I wrote about bundling strategies back in May 2023. Since then, a growing number of publishers have sought to innovate and expand their efforts in this space to fuel subscription growth. Piechota observes how companies aren’t just bundling their own products. They’re “increasingly partnering with other publishers, even competitors, to engage broader audiences.”
One such business, The New York Times, “is obviously the Queen of the bundle,” says Peter Houston, co-founder of Media Voices and the author of The Magazine Diaries.
The Gray Lady recently announced it has more than 11.4 million total subscribers. However, that hasn’t stopped it looking for subscription-rooted partnerships, at home and abroad.
Meanwhile, both Anderson and Piechota point to the success of the Norwegian publisher Amedia as a leader in this space. “Amedia is a super bundler,” says Piechota, “selling readers access to more than 100 brands with one price and app.” He notes that 75% of digital subscribers at Amedia upgraded to such a bundle; compared to 50% at the Times.
Trend 5: An emphasis on pricing and value
Media companies are increasingly vying for our time, as well as our wallets. “If Netflix puts its prices up, do you cancel Netflix, which you watch for hours every week, or the hobbyist magazine which you love but only read once a month?” asks Houston. Against this backdrop, the perceived value of your offer will define a consumer’s propensity to subscribe or keep a subscription.
The breadth and depth of content you offer is part of this equation. However, specialist content, which allows you to dig deeper, can also be a major draw. As Houston explains, “super-niche coverage will also become attractive to consumers who want less distraction and more of what they really care about.”
Tortoise Media’s Daily Sensemaker podcast Is a case in point. It hits multiple consumer needs via a daily 10-minute show exploring a single topic, designed “to make sense of the world.”
“Value adds” can also be part of this mix. Membership models have long leaned into this, with a mix of exclusives, events and discounts. Last week the podcast The Rest Is Politics US announced that founding members would be able to join recordings of new episodes live on YouTube. Everyone else gets to see (or hear) the show a day later.
Print might also be part of the equation. In October, The Atlantic revealed it would return to monthly editions of its print publication due to subscription growth and a return to profitability. The title had been published 10 times a year for 22 years running.
And after a four-year hiatus, Saveur magazine, a 30-year-old gourmet, food, wine, and travel publication, resumed print editions last spring. “We see our print product as the couture of our brand,” Editor in Chief and CEO Kat Craddocktold The Publisher Podcast. “It’s for the superfans.”
In short, subscribers want to feel they are getting their money’s worth, both in terms of content and experience. Delivering on both of these fronts is the sweet spot publishers will increasingly need to hit to drive subscription growth.
Assembling strategic pieces for subscription growth
The subscription landscape is beginning to undergo a major transformation, driven by the need to innovate, and the ability to harness AI and audience data to create more tailored and media-rich offerings. These factors combine to create opportunities for subscription growth.
INMA’s Greg Piechota highlights the key takeaway. “The common thread,” he says, “is a blend of differentiated journalism and engagement-driving products.” And this must be underpinned by “mastery in data analytics, and a willingness to experiment.”
Success in this arena is vital for the financial health of most media companies. A survey of 326 media leaders in 51 countries, as the Reuters Institute’s annual predictions report, found that 77% of respondents said subscriptions were “likely to be important or very important” for their company in 2025.
To succeed publishers must move “beyond long and discounted trials, and targeted price increases at renewal,” Piechota contends. Moreover, as Pugpig’s Anderson points out, although many publishers have been trying to increase the average revenue per user (often through premium bundles), that’s not an option that’s open to everyone.
As a result, in the coming year, expect to see a refinement of subscription tactics, with an emphasis on retention, personalization, and flexibility. These principles will cut across price structures, bundling strategies and wider engagement strategies.
“The bottom line for subscriptions is that people don’t want to waste money or time on them,” argues Media Voices’ Houston. “So many people have a bloated subscription stack and the reckoning is coming.”
With many outlets continuing to see a decline in monies from advertising and print, an emphasis on reader revenue will remain a strategic priority.
As Poool’s White emphasizes, that means it’s more important than ever to deploy user-focused, audience-first approaches. These models value loyalty and long-term relationships more than short-term conversions.
Continued subscription growth is possible for media companies that understand and incorporate these factors. By evolving their subscription growth strategies, they will be most likely to prosper in the year ahead and beyond.
The subscription media landscape continues to evolve, reshaping how consumers engage with digital content and how businesses strategize to maintain their market share. As digital media matures and price sensitivity increases, the market has responded with innovative pricing models and premium offerings.
The DCN Digital Media Subscription Tracking Report provides insights into these changes, offering year-over-year trends and brand-specific data exclusive to DCN members. Here are key highlights from the latest report:
Subscriptions Decline, Spending Rises: While the average household subscription count fell by 4% in Q4 2024, annual spending on digital subscriptions grew 7%, indicating a shift toward prioritizing high-value services.
Bundling Gains Popularity: 59% of SVOD subscribers opted for bundles in Q4 2024, up from 52% earlier in the year, as consumers seek value-driven solutions.
Ad-Supported Tiers Surge: Consumers increasingly choose ad-supported streaming services to cut costs. SVOD with ads saw a 14% increase, while no-ad services declined by 12%.
Top Performers in SVOD: Amazon Prime Video with ads quickly ascended to the top spot among users. Hulu with ads rose to third, Peacock with ads rose to fourth, while Disney+ Premium with no ads dropped to fifth place.
As the media subscription landscape continues to evolve, innovation in bundling and tiered options remains crucial. These findings underscore the resilience of premium digital content and the importance of staying attuned to evolving consumer needs.
DCN members can access after logging in, or registering an account (top right corner). Once logged in, a download button will appear below this text.
Apps are hot again. After the boom in investment in interactive publisher apps in the early 2010s failed to produce much in terms of audience growth or return on investment, many publishers quietly closed their apps, turning instead to putting content on social platforms and relying on responsive design for the mobile experience. But app strategy for media brands is shifting.
As the cost of producing apps comes down, coupled with the intense competition for attention on platforms, publishers are reconsidering their app-approach.
The intent is different this time, however. Rather than being a vehicle to drive discovery, publishers like the FT with lightweight offering FT Edit, the New York Times’ subscription-only NYT Audio app, and even start-ups like the Baltimore Banner are using their own apps to build deeper relationships with superfans.
New York Magazine is the latest publisher to take another look at apps. They previously launched one in 2013; a replica of the print magazine with interactive features, which was shut down a few years later.
Last month, they announced the launch of a new flagship mobile app. Notably, it includes all six of New York Magazine’s verticals as well: Intelligencer, The Cut, Vulture, The Strategist, Curbed, and Grub Street.
So what made an app an attractive proposition this time around, and what are their primary aims with it? “Over 70% of our readers read on mobile,” Priyanka Arya, SVP of consumer revenue at Vox Media said. “Mobile is the primary point of entry, and the primary reading experience for our subscribers and readers. So we wanted to create the best reading experience for those users.”
Arya also said that an app was one of the top features requested by subscribers, both through solicited and unsolicited feedback. As a result, the team decided to look at creating a mobile-first experience that would first and foremost serve subscribers.
Strategy: One app, six titles
The decision to have all six verticals within one app may seem unusual, but it reflects the subscription setup of New York Magazine. Rather than offer standalone subscriptions to each vertical, readers who wish to access Vulture or Curbed instead pay for a New York Magazine subscription which gets them access across all verticals.
Arya emphasized that having the verticals and the appropriate branding was important rather than pooling articles across the portfolio by topic, for example.
“We see very different behavior across our audience,” Arya said, explaining why they offered them all in one app. “There’s folks who really go deep into one vertical, there are folks who enjoy multiple and go across our portfolio, and we wanted to create an experience that served both users as well as enhanced discovery for those who may only be single-vertical readers.”
When users enter the app, there are a variety of different experiences they can have. If they’re very focused on one vertical, they can set it as their homepage and tailor the experience. But Arya said that they make an active effort to encourage people to read across the brands with toggle options for quick takes, deep divers and long reads. “We see folks who do read across verticals are among the highest engaged and highest retained,” she noted.
The app therefore also serves as a discovery vehicle for these other brands. Readers may have different levels of familiarity with other verticals when they subscribe. “We see through our newsletter efforts that there may be loyal Vulture readers or The Cut readers who are just going to those home pages, so they’re not experiencing everything that we’re putting in print or we’re putting in some of our other verticals,” Arya pointed out. “But they tend to really enjoy it when they do find [others].”
A premium reading experience
Rather than a bells-and-whistles experience, app users these days seek clean, fast-loading reading. But publishers still have to develop a strategy that differentiates their app experience from web browsing to encourage downloads.
The New York Magazine app has built in a number of features to offer a premium experience. As noted above, there are convenient toggles between brands, and the ability to set a homepage while easily navigating to other sites. The app also offers personalized notifications so readers can get alerts for what they most care about, and a better ad experience than on browser.
Perhaps the most compelling proposition of the app is curation. The app includes a ‘Great Stories’ section that pulls together a curation of timely stories and the best pieces from across the portfolio, selected by editors.
“Our feature stories that run in our print magazine and across the portfolio online are among our most popular no matter what interests you may have or vertical affinity you may have,” Arya explained. “That is a place that doesn’t exist on web that can really help you navigate through some of our best pieces and read what our editors are recommending.”
Helping users find the best stories without the help of algorithms is an increasingly appealing prospect. Because personalization was available for push notifications, the team were keen to have somewhere to showcase the best of their editorial across brands, with human curation.
A long-term play
For many publishers, return on investment (ROI) can be a stumbling point for apps. Although they’re cheaper than ever, they do still require upfront investment, often without the promise of short-term, or even medium-term returns.
For Arya, the app is a long-term investment. “What we’re hoping is by getting as many subscribers as we can to download and use the app, we can increase engagement and therefore retention,” she explained. “There’s a pretty lucrative argument around retention, which is always a longer term play, but a much more sustainable play.”
“Our top 20% engaged subscribers have a 30 to 40% higher retention rate than our average subscriber. That’s substantial. So our goal is to continue to move more people into higher engaged tiers.”
Retention increases are far from an overnight task. But a better retention outcome translates to a solid – and more sustainable – revenue outcome in the long term.
Although the New York Magazine app is primarily a retention play, Vox has a strategy for encouraging non-subscribers to download the app with the goal of converting them later. Users have to create an account up-front. Then they get a number of free articles before hitting the subscriber wall, similar to the web experience.
“We built the app with our subscribers in mind; a lot of the feature development was looking at those reader habits and building for them,” said Arya. “But we are encouraging readers who aren’t subscribers to download the app, and we do have a strategy to engage them within the app and ideally convert them.”
Promising early results
At the time of writing, the New York Magazine app is in the top #10 of the Magazines and Newspapers section of the app store. It also has very good ratings and feedback, and requests are already coming in from subscribers for features such as saving and favoriting articles. An Android version of the app is also in the works.
Crucially, Arya sees it as more important than ever that publishers focus on their own properties. “With algorithms changing and platforms constantly changing, betting on your direct traffic and your loyal audience is something that’s been really important to us, and I think should be for other publishers,” she emphasized.
Media companies are increasingly exploring innovative revenue models as a strategic element of ongoing efforts to reduce their reliance on advertising and subscriptions. This is significant because, although the global advertising market continues to grow, the proportion of these revenues coming to publishers has long been in decline. Similarly, despite the fact that the media industry has seen numerous subscription success stories, research suggests that the opportunity may be leveling off.
Given these financial realities, revenue diversification is essential. Fortunately, there are many ideas out there to learn from. Here are five alternative – and well-established – revenue sources that are poised to become more prominent, and important, for publishers in the year ahead.
As Generative AI continues to gain traction, many media companies are signing licensing agreements with the companies behind these technologies.
There are pros and cons to this, with several publishers currently litigating against their content being used by these platforms. However, for some media companies, AI licensing agreements offer an alluring mix of copyright protection and monetization opportunities.
Examples that we have seen in the past year include:
Hearst’s partnership with ChatGPT which promises “appropriate citations and direct links.”
Reuters, Axel Springer and the USA TODAY Network are featured content partners for a voice delivered summary of the news and weather that is built into Microsoft’s Co-Pilot product.
Reuters also agreed a multi-year deal with Meta, supplying content for queries asked about the news in Meta’s AI chatbot.
However, not all publishers are ceding the AI opportunity to tech companies, which could offer licensing revenue closer to home. One major publisher, Dow Jones, recently signed up nearly 4,000 news publishers for Factiva Smart Summary, a new Generative AI feature in its business intelligence platform. These licensing agreements span more than 160 countries and 29 different languages. Partners include The Associated Press, Swiss News Agency AWP Finanznachrichten AG, News Corp Australia, and The Washington Post.
As Generative AI continues to expand, expect more of these partnerships and products in 2025.
2. Live events and experiences
Pre-pandemic, live events offered a major source of revenue optimism for publishers. Post-COVID, this has morphed into a mix of in-person, online, and hybrid models. To draw sponsors and sell tickets, events work best when aligned with your brand and the content you are known for, an approach that a growing number of media outlets are leaning into.
Forbes has capitalized on its 30 Under 30 list by wrapping a live multi-day event around it. Their 2025 program includes a private concert, networking opportunities, industry-focused excursions, as well as sessions with speakers.
Condé Nast leveraged one of its best known brands to launch Vogue World in 2022, which are going strong. Hosted in global fashion capitals like New York and Paris, these annual one-day events are also live streamed. Hollywood is the location for their 2025 event. The company is also hosting an immersive exhibition in London, narrated by Cate Blanchett, which explores the history of the modern runway show.
The Innovation Consulting Group notes that some publishers derive up to 20% of their income from events. Events, they observe, can “help hike circulation, attract advertisers who might not advertise in the magazine’s media,” as well as “give magazines “face time” with their subscribers and potential subscribers.”
Given these strategic and financial benefits, we can expect more publishers to explore the burgeoning events market in the year ahead.
3. Podcasting revenue innovation
Podcasts have been a bright spot for many publishers for a while, with many doubling down on the medium despite wider financial challenges. For the biggest shows and brands this can be a particularly profitable space.
Continued optimism for this medium means that some publishers are looking to expand their podcasting portfolio and innovate on the ways they monetize.
Meanwhile, the merging of events and podcasts is growing in prominence and revenue potential. Fans can connect with hosts and each other, deepening loyalty to brands and shows. All the while, podcasts offer media companies multiple monetization opportunities that go beyond advertising and subscriptions.
This summer, The Ringer hosted a residency for six of their podcasts at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. “As an audience engagement tool it takes fandom to a different level,” says Geoff Chow, Head of Podcast Studios & Managing Director for The Ringer.
The Wall Street Journal’s recent dive into “The Rest Is History” podcast revealed that its hosts were netting nearly $100,000 a month, through a combination of their podcast, monetizing clips on YouTube and live events. “History professors struggle to get students excited about the past,” the Journal wrote. “Yet at a recent live show in London, Holland and Sandbrook drew a raucous Gen Z audience with a rock-concert vibe.”
Wondery is similarly looking to create live tours for some of the most popular podcasts. With more than 200 active shows, over a quarter of which hit No. 1 on Apple Podcasts, they have a potentially large paying audience to tap into. Participants in their membership plan, Wondery+, get early access to these live events, a membership benefit deployed by Slate and others.
As podcasts continue to evolve, these types of live events and tie-ins with wider memberships programs, will only become increasingly intertwined.
4. E-commerce and affiliate partnerships
With e-commerce now worth nearly $1.2 trillion in the USA alone this year, this is too big a market for media companies to ignore. In response, media entities are progressively integrating e-commerce into their platforms, selling merchandise and other products directly to consumers.
The Daily Wire generated over $22 million from commerce in 2023. nearly 10% of its revenues. Axios reports that much of this derived from its Jeremy’s Razors products, which produced $19 million in sales. Their merchandise store made up most of The Daily Wire’s remaining commerce income.
Recommendation sites are another area of e-commerce that media players continue to explore. The Associated Press partnered with Taboola in March to launch AP Buyline, offering how-to guides and reviews in areas such as fashion, beauty and wellness, tech, pets and Black Friday deals.
This launch came against a backdrop whereby some of AP’s core business is being squeezed. Local publishers Gannett and McClatchy ended their long-standing partnerships with AP, due to a desire to cut costs and invest elsewhere. As the AP themselves note, fees from U.S. newspapers were at one point responsible for “virtually all of its revenue.” However, diversification means “U.S. newspaper fees now constitute just over 10% of its annual income.”
Across the pond, The Independent, a UK newspaper, reported a 26% increase in revenue from e-commerce in the past year. Although review sections have potentially been impacted by recent changes to Google’s site reputation abuse policies, some publishers are growing their e-commerce revenues, despite inflationary pressures and a cost-of-living crisis.
Such initiatives highlight how publishers can leverage their editorial authority to benefit from reader’s purchasing decisions. Effectively creating affiliate partnerships can assist audiences and a publishers’ bottom line.
5. The games people play
The last piece of our revenue puzzle for 2025 sees publishers continuing to invest in games.
As twipe explains, games “engage readers differently than traditional news content.” “They provide a mental break, foster daily engagement, and satisfy psychological cravings… forming daily habits crucial for subscriber retention.”
Subsequently, games can be a valuable plank in helping to drive loyalty. Jonathan Knight, head of games at The New York Times, says that “when we see subscribers engage with both games and news in any given week, we’re seeing some of the best long-term subscriber retention from that pattern.” Subsequently, the Gray Lady has expanded their portfolio of games. They’ve also made games more prominent on their app, encouraging audiences to “come for the games, stay for the news.”
In that vein, French outlet Ouest-France publishes a game called “mystery photo of the day”. Readers must match the photo with the article in which it featured. “It’s a way to get them to discover our articles,” says Emmanuel Chevalier, head of Ouest-France’s digital acquisition department. Meanwhile, Hearst’s acquisition last year of Puzzmo is another example of a publisher flexing their financial muscles to expand their games offering.
Games can offer an escape from an often bleak news agenda, providing a means for audiences to come back every day, and thereby create a deeper connection between readers and publishers. Because of this, games are poised to play an even more critical role in engagement in revenue strategies in 2025 and beyond.
Looking ahead at the importance of revenue diversification
From AI licensing to live events, e-commerce, podcasts, and games, publishers are actively diversifying their income strategies in response to shifts in markets and consumer needs. While advertising and subscriptions remain critical components of the media revenue landscape, media companies continue to experiment and innovate to leverage their brand strengths to create other revenue streams.
Through these efforts, publishers are finding new ways to connect with audiences and drive revenues. In doing this, they are also trying to lay long-term foundations, with several of these strands focused on fostering loyalty, deepening engagement, and connecting with audiences in innovative ways.
As we head into 2025, the challenge will be scaling these initiatives in an increasingly competitive landscape. When many publisher peers are doing similar things, distinctiveness, brand value and relationships, as well as pricing points, will be paramount.
At the same time, given the need to reduce reliance on traditional revenue models, diversification remains more important than ever. Doing this successfully requires flexibility, creativity, and a willingness to experiment.
If this is executed well, like some of the examples that we have seen here, then innovative strategies to create income offer more than just means for survival. After all, revenue diversification offers perhaps the only pathway to long-term growth and resilience in an ever-evolving media ecosystem. As such, the need to explore some of the types of ideas outlined in this article, and to actively move away from a reliance on advertising and subscriptions, is non-negotiable.
As 2024 comes to a close, it’s clear that this year has been defined by transformative shifts in how publishers and broadcasters approach digital media monetization. From advancing privacy-first strategies to adapting to the dominance of Connected TV (CTV), the industry has shown resilience and innovation.
Looking back, these pivotal moments offer valuable lessons, while also pointing toward the priorities for 2025:
1. Brand safety took center stage
In 2024, publishers prioritized brand safety, recognizing its essential role in maintaining trust with advertisers and audiences. Advanced contextual targeting tools, coupled with stringent editorial standards, helped build confidence in ad placements. As content environments become more complex, this focus on safety and transparency will deepen in 2025, with publishers investing in more precise, AI-powered brand safety solutions to enhance advertiser confidence.
2. Sustainability became non-negotiable
This year saw sustainability move from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have.” Publishers adopted greener technologies and committed to measurable ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals. Advertisers partnered with eco-conscious media outlets, aligning campaigns with consumer demand for responsible practices. In 2025, sustainability metrics like carbon impact will become more sophisticated, and partnerships around ethical advertising will deepen.
3. Subscription models found their groove
2024 solidified the role of subscription models as a key revenue driver. Publishers balanced subscription growth with ad-supported strategies, creating hybrid models that appealed to a broader audience base. Enhanced user experiences, including personalized content and seamless interfaces, became the standard. Heading into 2025, these strategies will be refined to further integrate advertising and subscription revenue streams without sacrificing user satisfaction.
4. The Cookieless landscape remained in transition
Despite Google cancelling the phaseout of third-party cookies, publishers prepared diligently for a cookieless future, which–regardless of the future of cookies–was not a bad thing. First-party data ecosystems matured in 2024, with publishers focusing on fostering direct relationships with audiences to enhance consented data collection. Contextual targeting gained momentum as a privacy-compliant alternative to behavioral targeting. In 2025, publishers will double down on these efforts, enhancing collaboration within industry consortiums to scale identity solutions and ensure consistent audience addressability.
5. Algorithms challenged publishers yet again
Platform algorithm changes disrupted referral traffic and revenue streams throughout 2024, prompting publishers to seek greater independence from big tech. Many pivoted to direct traffic strategies, premium content offerings, and diversified revenue streams. Looking ahead, 2025 will likely see media companies make an increased push toward leveraging first-party data for direct monetization and strengthening collaborations with advertisers on transparent revenue-sharing models.
6. CTV dominated the monetization landscape
Connected TV (CTV) solidified its role as a top revenue driver for broadcasters and publishers in 2024. With programmatic capabilities maturing and advertisers shifting budgets to CTV, the sell side capitalized on high-impact formats and premium inventory. Heading into 2025, cross-platform measurement tools will gain prominence, addressing fragmentation and unifying reporting across linear, CTV, and digital platforms to maximize revenue opportunities.
7. Interactive and video content drove engagement
Interactive and video content stood out as key formats in 2024, delivering higher engagement and monetization opportunities for publishers. Shoppable video, gamified experiences, and dynamic storytelling resonated strongly with audiences and aligned with advertisers’ goals. In 2025, publishers will explore more immersive formats like augmented reality (AR) and metaverse integrations to maintain their competitive edge and deliver differentiated ad experiences.
8. Privacy-first innovations gained momentum
Stricter global privacy regulations spurred publishers to adopt privacy-by-design strategies in 2024. Building robust consent management frameworks and exploring privacy-preserving technologies, such as federated learning and differential privacy, allowed publishers to continue providing actionable insights while protecting user data. In 2025, these innovations will become integral to the sell-side toolkit, as publishers work to balance data privacy with advertiser demands for precision targeting and measurement.
9. Commitment to supply path optimization (SPO) grew
Publishers focused on providing greater transparency into their inventory through tools like ads.txt and sellers.json, bolstering trust with advertisers. Supply path optimization (SPO) became a cornerstone strategy for reducing inefficiencies and maximizing revenue. In 2025, publishers will continue to refine their SPO strategies, emphasizing collaboration with trusted partners and leveraging advanced fraud detection tools to ensure quality ad experiences.
10. Enlisting support for quality journalism became critical
In 2024, publishers emphasized the critical value of quality journalism, recognizing its role in fostering trust, user loyalty, and timely access to reliable news. With global elections drawing attention, traditional news sites stood out for delivering brand-safe environments, engaged audiences, and measurable performance.
Teads’ “Value of Traditional News” study highlighted a strong correlation between ad attention and upper-funnel brand outcomes, revealing a 77% lift in brand outcomes when ads appeared alongside trusted news content. As we move into 2025, supporting journalism must remain a cornerstone for advertisers and publishers, driving long-term value and reinforcing the vital role of trusted information in democracies worldwide.
Looking forward to 2025
As we turn toward 2025, the themes of trust, sustainability, and innovation will remain paramount. Publishers and advertisers who focus on privacy-first strategies, advanced contextual advertising, and cross-platform collaboration will be well-positioned to navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Expect to see further advancements in AI-driven creative optimization, more sophisticated approaches to audience addressability, and a continued push for transparency across the entire digital advertising ecosystem. By building on the lessons of 2024, industry leaders can drive meaningful connections with audiences while maximizing monetization opportunities.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Apple took podcasts mainstream, but the tech giant seems to be losing its grip on audio audiences: A recent study out this summer found that YouTube is now the most used podcast platform in the U.S.
That’s left some publishers and podcast production houses scrambling to figure out a video strategy to complement their audio-only offerings. But there’s at least one player in the game that seems well prepared for the platform shift: Crooked Media.
The company, which is focused on news, politics, and liberal-leaning commentary and analysis, currently boasts more than 40 podcasts in its portfolio. And video is a big part of Crooked Media’s strategy — but they’re not just playing on YouTube. The company is also pushing video content on TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter). And even better? Crooked Media is generating revenue along the way.
The YouTube video-podcasting strategy
“We started putting streams of Pod Save America on YouTube in early 2018,” says Matt DeGroot, the company’s vice president of production.
These days, every audio-only episode of an ongoing and regularly published Crooked podcast also has a video component, which is uploaded to YouTube. For Crooked, the foray into video has been part of a deliberate plan to grow its audience.
“Really the biggest impetus there and why we’ve pushed so hard is that people who consume podcasts on a traditional platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, tend to go to those platforms knowing exactly what they’re looking for. So, there isn’t a ton of discoverability,” DeGroot says.
“Everyone uses YouTube, and YouTube — for better or for worse — knows what people want to see. YouTube will find our shows and basically serve it up to people,” he says. “And people on YouTube might be a little more curious and willing to take a chance on new content.”
Over time, Crooked has built a significant audience that is unique to the platform. It has 10 channels and playlists that are updated regularly, and the company currently claims more than 1.2 million YouTube subscribers.
When a big news event happens, Crooked can leverage its political commentary and analysis from a show like Pod Save America and tap into an audience who may already be searching YouTube for information. “If there’s a big story happening and Pod Save America is doing an episode, reacting to it or explaining the context, that’s a great opportunity for someone new to sort of stumble upon it,” DeGroot says.
For example, earlier this month, the company posted a segment from Pod Save America that featured the hosts of the show discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’ debate performance, and global superstar Taylor Swift’s endorsement of the Democratic candidate.
Those events were dominating broadcast news, digital media outlets, and social platforms. And Crooked was there, ready and waiting for curious YouTubers to find them. Their video on the subject got nearly 730,000 streams as of this writing, and is one of the top 15 most popular videos on their channel.
“We’ve really been able to harness that power and seize those moments in a way that is hard to do on a podcast platform, where, like I said, people really know what they’re looking for when they open the app,” DeGroot says. “YouTube just gives us more opportunity to find new people.”
Beyond giving people a new entry point to their content, video gives audiences a new format to access the Crooked universe. “More and more with the advent of smart TVs, we’ve been seeing a lot of people who are really consuming the YouTube product from their televisions and treating it like watching the evening news,” DeGroot says.
This is especially true for older audiences.
“My mom, bless her heart, she does not know how to use a podcast,” DeGroot says. “She doesn’t know how to find a show there. But she knows YouTube and she knows how to type in Pod Save America and get to the channel and pull up the latest episode.”
However, while video has helped build Crooked Media’s audience, the experience remains audio-centric. “We get anecdotal comments of people saying, ‘Oh, I put this on while I’m making dinner.’ They may not be watching it a hundred percent with their eyes on the screen the whole time, so it’s still somewhat of an audio experience, because they’ll have it on in the background while they’re cooking.”
Cashing in on YouTube
Because the company publishes Crooked Media’s podcast content as YouTube videos, its ad sales team has more touch points to offer potential sponsors.
“YouTube runs ads and we have that aspect of monetization. But then our sales team also does sell against that for the podcasts,” DeGroot says. “So an episode of Pod Save America, for example, the ads that appear in the podcast when you listen are also in the YouTube version.” In this way, a client gets a two-for-one. It can buy ads from one media company and get two distinct audiences.
In addition to selling to two audiences, Crooked is also leveraging video content to create exclusive offerings for advertisers. “That’s something we’ve started doing this year — having a single sponsor,” DeGroot says. “Someone like ZBiotics sponsors Hysteria’s ‘This F*cking Guy’ series. So we’ll include a 30 second ad read in the middle of the video, and maybe a short mention of the sponsor at the beginning. It’s a great way to add that additional revenue and help pay for the production costs that do naturally come with video, because it is a time consuming and work intensive thing.”
However, Crooked is looking beyond advertisers when it comes to monetizing video. The company has a paid subscription offering — called “Friends of the Pod” — which provides subscribers with ad-free podcast feeds, bonus content from Crooked hosts, and the ability to talk directly with on-air talent on Crooked’s subscriber-only Discord server.
“Friends of the Pod” also get subscriber-only YouTube shows. “One is a weekly, called, Terminally Online, and then we have a couple biweekly shows — Dan Pfeiffer’s Poller Coaster, and another election special called Inside 2024,” DeGroot says. “Those are available as both audio and video components to subscribers.”
Social video strategy
While Crooked Media is going big on YouTube, it’s not the only social video platform the company is publishing on. “There are real opportunities in that sort of shorter form content,” DeGroot says. “We are not oblivious to the fact that a lot of people, if they see a video on YouTube even if it looks really appealing to them, if it’s 90 minutes long, they’ll say, ‘I don’t have time for that. I’m not gonna take a chance on this random video.’”
To counter this, Crooked Media will splice one of its full length episodes into shorter clips — something that’s 60 or 90 seconds long — and upload that content to TikTok, Instagram, or X. “People are willing to give that a chance,” DeGroot says. “They’ll see a video short clip and be like, ‘Oh, what are these people saying?’ And from there it draws them in and makes them curious to hear more,” which could lead them to YouTube or a podcast platform.
Pod Save America has about 14,000 followers on TikTok, but their short videos reach way more people than that. A recent post discussing a press conference that former President Donald Trump had garnered more than 100,000 views.
Crooked’s podcast host will also create what DeGroot calls “ancillary” content — behind the scenes moments that still speak to the brand’s broader tone. That might include the hosts’ live reaction to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his recent criminal trial, or an on the ground video message from the Democratic National Convention.
“For those videos that live on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube shorts, it’s a feature that we’ve been really pushing lately and finding a lot of success with,” DeGroot says. “We’ve found that doing those types of things really helps the content spread on those platforms and bring in new people who then get excited to watch the podcasts.”
For DeGroot, the video strategy across platforms is all about creating more touch points — for audiences and advertisers.
“It’s gonna take some time to build that audience, and you really have to nurture it over time,” he says. “As long as you keep on your patterns, stay with it, and stay consistent, you will get the rewards from that.”
Despite the challenges thrown at publishers by obfuscating metrics or deliverability changes, newsletters continue to grow in importance. Media companies increasingly use email newsletters as a key tool for maintaining relationships with audiences away from social media, finding new readers, building habits, and opening new revenue streams.
At The Publisher Newsletter Summit, publishers came together to share strategies, advice and case studies on everything from newsletter monetization to audience growth.
Here are some of the strategies that they shared:
1. Don’t be afraid to center personalities
The role of journalists with followings has grown more complicated than ever in recent years. One theme that emerged at the Summit from a number of the sessions was that – if managed right – individual members of your team can serve as an incredible audience-building tool.
Women’s membership and community publisher Black Ballad started a newsletter from founder Tobi Oredein as a way to create a bond with the reader, because people build connections with humans, not brands. “Social media is very noisy,” Oredein outlined. Given that Black Ballad has paywall, she finds that “there is a barrier with people who can’t afford a membership. The newsletter is free, so everyone that’s signed up with their email gets that newsletter every week. So it’s a way to create that personal relationship.”
Leaning into this has also opened up revenue opportunities, although Oredein said that she chooses partner organizations very carefully. A recent campaign with the Founder’s Letter newsletter saw Black Ballad work with Maltesers around maternal mental health as Oredein was about to give birth to her second child.
“I wrote this newsletter on letting go of the Superwoman complex as a mum, second time around,” she explained. “It all came together and the newsletter opened the partnership; we had an editorial video that went alongside the essay, and it just went nuts. People loved the partnership. We realized that my personal newsletter opens up partnerships. Now the newsletter stands alone as the most requested advertising channel and is the most popular source of revenue for Black Ballad.”
There are risks with building newsletter audiences around individual journalists, but these can be managed. It’s an issue UK news brand The Telegraph faced when a big-name writer for their political newsletter left, and the team had to decide what to do next.
“We’ve grown [the newsletter] substantially since then,” Head of Newsletters Maire Bonheim said, explaining that they gave another political journalist a chance to fully front the newsletter. “He’s in your inbox at exactly 1pm every day. He’s really passionate about it, and he gives it his own edge. People have built up a habit and a relationship with him.”
2. Prioritize newsletters for retention and conversion
Special interest publisher Immediate Media monetizes many of its brands like Good Food and Gardeners’ World through subscriptions. Head of CRM and Customer Retention Matt Nash sees newsletters as playing a vital role in their subscription strategy, especially for long-term relationships.
“One of the big reasons why we’re so focused on newsletters from a subscription capacity is that 25% of our app subscribers received or read a newsletter before going on to subscribe,” he said. “So on average, there’s about 18 months between someone registering on Good Food and then converting to an app subscriber.”
“We also find that conversion from trials – mainly we run free trials going into paid subscriptions on the app – is around 10 percentage points higher for people that have previously been on our newsletter base before converting to a subscription.”
Nash shared that they have a two-part email strategy for pre- and post-subscription. The first half is focused around getting eyes on the website, showcasing the product and the subscription offers. “Every newsletter we send is an opportunity for us to try and convert someone if they look like they’re likely to subscribe,” he explained.
Once someone has converted, the focus switches to the “core readership phase,” where newsletters are part of a multi-channel tech stack optimized to try and get existing users to continue their subscription. The publisher uses a range of personalization options, from content type to send frequency and time to hit the readers at just the right frequency for them.
3. Consider repackaging content for educational courses
A number of publishers offer newsletter “courses” with a clear start and end point as an alternative way of engaging audiences. As part of its newsletter strategy, Pew Research Center launched an email course, which allowed them to leverage their reports and blog posts on U.S. Immigration. More recently The Guardian released a five-week email coaching plan called Reclaim Your Brain, which has attracted over 140,000 sign-ups.
Seeing examples like these, Ruth Hardy-Mullings, Head of Content at Community Care, a publication for social workers, wondered if newsletter courses could help solve some of their challenges. Their biggest driver of traffic was their weekly newsletter. She was also aware of the friction readers faced finding time to log onto the website and proactively seek out training content. A course delivered straight to their inbox would be a good way to prove value.
They launched some test courses in March 2021, delivering six emails a week over a three week period. “We took the content from longer guides and hosted it within the body of the email itself, so it solved that problem of having to go and log in on the site,” Hardy-Mullings explained. “Someone was able to open up their email, read the content and get that learning wherever they are, whether they’re in a car before they go and do a home visit, on their commute home, making use of those small amounts of time that people do have.”
Each email had a recap section at the beginning, a progress bar to keep people motivated, further reading links, and a reflective exercise at the end. Hardy-Mullings noted that signing up for a finite period of time was helpful for professionals who get thousands of emails. “The general feedback was that people really loved the convenience of the course and that format of learning, a good way that could genuinely fit into their working week,” she said.
Email courses may not suit every publisher. However, they can be a strong way of repurposing evergreen content, reducing friction points for membership organizations, or giving samples of journalism for paywalled publications, to name a few use cases.
4. Prioritize list-cleaning for a healthy newsletter strategy
One of the most revealing sessions at the Summit was Maire Bonheim and David Alexander, Head and Deputy Head of Newsletters respectively at The Telegraph. They talked about how to turn around an underperforming newsletter, and noted that they often have to use different tactics across almost 40 newsletters in their portfolio.
Alexander was keen to emphasize that although metrics have a place in your newsletter strategy, they need to be the right ones. “If you put all your effort into getting a massive list, and you trick people into signing up to your newsletter, they’ll get it. But no one will care because they didn’t mean to get it in the first place,” he explained. “You’ll have a massive list, and over time, your email provider will think it’s spam, and they’ll just put it in everybody’s junk. Pursuing vanity stats is a fool’s game. Massive lists are not the aim. You want people to read your stuff.”
Clearing lists and pursuing slower, more genuine engagement is a braver path to take, especially with other commercial and business pressures publishers face. Bonheim said that they have different time periods for list cleaning different newsletters. “If a newsletter is a daily send, then we wait a shorter amount of time before we list cleanse, whereas if something’s weekly or even monthly, we wait longer,” she explained.
The Telegraph was also facing an issue where when some marketing emails were sent to editorial newsletter segments, readers were getting confused and newsletters were ending up in the promotions tab.
“As a whole at The Telegraph… the volume of emails had gone up hugely, and we needed to get smarter about our overall email strategy and cleverer about who we segment and target,” Bonheim said, explaining that they send warnings about removing readers from lists if they don’t ‘Click to stay’. “So to combat that, we became much more stringent with our list cleanse emails, and that seems to be having a positive impact.”
The takeaway
These strategies may not work for every publisher, and one theme which emerged strongly from the Publisher Newsletter Summit is that newsletters can be used for a wide range of different purposes. The key is to be very clear for each newsletter what its purpose is, and how that will be measured.
“[Key metrics] are so different across all our titles,” said Alexander of his work on The Telegraph’s newsletters. “I’ve worked on newsletters that have had almost 1,000 words in them, and people want to read them more than anything. I’ve also looked after newsletters where it’s all about getting people through to the site. You have to be really clear on what’s important.”
Whether it’s exploring the potential of short email ‘courses’ or letting editors take a personal lead, there are plenty of ways to freshen up a newsletter strategy. But whether this is through iterative changes, pivots or launches, keep the newsletter’s purpose front and center.
The Economist is an industry leader when it comes to subscriptions innovation: Last year, they paved the way in audio by paywalling all but one of their podcast portfolio. The Economist’s multi award-winning Espresso app has been used as a blueprint for other publishers looking to offer a sample of content behind a cheaper paywall. Earlier this year they also launched the largest brand campaign since the early 2000s in a bid to attract younger readers.
What binds these initiatives together is a strong consumer research team. In addition to brand building and surveying about new initiatives or products, this team is also involved in almost all aspects of the organization, from retention efforts to optimizing its growing B2B business.
The Economist’s Global Head of Consumer Research Seema Hope believes that this is a function more publishers should be seriously considering to optimize subscription efforts. There is real value to be gained in getting to know audiences on a deeper level, even for those without paywalled products.
Getting to know consumer research
Hope’s Consumer Research team is one of the few which has ongoing communication with readers. “We get a lot of dialogue through editorial; people write in,” she noted. “But that two-way conversation is where we come in, and we take that really seriously. We’re there to represent what consumers are saying, and it’s our job to be frontline and independent on that.”
The team is made up of a mixture of disciplines, from UX and design to data and research. Hope firmly believes that it is more important than ever to bring these together rather than operate in silos. “You want to make sure that you’re understanding everything about the consumer, not just the way they’re interacting with a product. You want to understand their needs and motivations,” she explained.
This does add a layer of pressure on research teams to specialize in multiple methodologies. But Hope has seen this be advantageous for careers. Her team has people who are strong in UX, qualitative research and talking to people, as well as experts in qualitative and statistical methodologies. As consumer researchers, being able to operate across all of these means that they can work more effectively with teams across the business, from product to consumer marketing. “We touch nearly every aspect of the organization. And that can only get wider,” Hope said.
An internal and external independent voice
One reason the consumer research team at The Economist is so effective is because they believe in taking stakeholders on the research journey with them. “We won’t just deliver a project and say: ‘Here you go,’” Hope said, explaining how they anticipate any resistance to findings. “We start in partnership with them, working out what the objective is, what the business challenges are. Then our job is finding the right methodology to get them to a deeper understanding.”
Most of the projects the team are involved with are “quite iterative, with constant dialogue,” so findings aren’t a surprise. Hope also outlined that her researchers are often embedded in other teams while a project is ongoing so that everything is transparent. For example, if a consumer has made a statement about user experience in a video, that video is shared with the relevant people in The Economist’s Slack channels.
This perception extends to their interactions with participants, too. “It’s really important that we’re independent when we’re talking to consumers, and we make it really clear that you’re not going to hurt anyone’s feelings [with honest feedback],” Hope said. Constant and open dialogue with customers helps, as does keeping each other’s biases in check internally, with the team ensuring they’re not asking leading questions or putting a spin on data interpretation.
Currently working on growth and retention – once customers are acquired, how do we best keep them, as well as brand perception. Also students and what loyalty means for a news org.
Uncharted territory with Podcasts+
One prominent example of the Consumer Research team’s influence was in in shaping The Economist’s Podcasts+ program. Last October, the publisher moved all but its daily The Intelligence podcast behind a paywall, offering a separate podcast subscription product.
Planning for this was a challenge as virtually no other publishers had made such a move (and still haven’t!). Many consumers will have never come across a paid-for podcast until they hit The Economist’s paywall.
The decision to charge for podcasts was one the whole company stood by. It seemed incongruous to have such a significant product available for free when nothing else was? But they had concerns about how audiences would respond. Hope’s team started with needs, behaviors and motivations. This shaped their messaging and approach.
“It was interesting the way the project evolved. Our consumers were telling us, ‘I can see why you’re doing this. You value your journalism. It’s really in-depth. It’s well-researched. It’s amazing to hear the voice of the journalists in my ear. I feel a real personal connection to this person,’” she explained. “So in the end, our consumers told us the kind of language that we should use when talking to them.”
It took months of conversations and rigorous testing before they arrived at a model that made sense for the publication, as well as one consumers would take up. The Intelligence daily podcast would remain free as a daily touchpoint. However, all other weekly and daily shows would be available for $4.90/month, or as part of the full Economist subscription package.
Hope says that there has been uptake not just of the podcast-only package, but also to the full subscription. One finding that her team were able to pick up was the perception of increased value now that the podcasts were paywalled. “Once you start charging for something, people put more of a value on it. So it’s changed that perception of quality content because they’re now paying for it, and increasing their listening,” she noted.
Now, their focus is on understanding how to move people along the funnel from free to podcast to full subscriber. Hope’s work is never done; consumer research is an ongoing dialogue as tools, technology and behaviors evolve. “I think it’s naive to think you get it right the first time. It’s naive to think that you stop learning. So we rarely say, ‘That’s the end of a project’,” she said.
Lessons from The Economist’s consumer research
Hope has had over 16 years working in audience research, and firmly believes it’s a role all publishers should have to inform decisions across the business. It’s a role that changes and evolves. “But at the very crux of it, we are, as publishers, curating and creating content for a person,” she emphasized. “If you don’t understand what they’re thinking and the why, what, who they are as people, it’s very difficult to adapt what you’re doing.”
We may have more data and insights than ever before into our audiences. But this can’t always provide the full picture about what is going on with consumers. To truly create products that audiences not only enjoy, but are willing to pay for, benefits greatly from insights that run deeper than data. For The Economist – ranked sixth most effective subscriber conversion publisher globally – having a dedicated consumer research team to get under the skin of what really makes their audience tick is clearly paying off.
