World Press Trends Outlook 2024–2025: Revenue Trends
Shifts in print revenue, digital strategies and emerging income streams can be seen at publishers across the globe
This is an extract from WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends Outlook 2024–2025 report. You can read the previously published Executive Summary here.
This chapter explores changing revenue dynamics, including the continued significance of print, the growth of digital, and ongoing efforts to build sustainable alternative income streams.
This year’s World Press Trends report once again reveals a complex landscape for revenue generation across the global news industry.
As digital transformation continues, publishers face the dual challenge of declining traditional revenue sources, in particular income from print advertising and circulation, alongside the need for continued growth in digital and alternative revenue streams.
These alternative income sources remain some way off from historical print levels. Meanwhile, as noted in previous studies, digital gains for most publishers remain insufficient to counterbalance the steady declines in print and advertising income that they have previously benefited from.
The continued importance of print
Print still accounts for a substantial portion of total revenue for multiple legacy news publishers, particularly in countries like Japan and India.
Whether it is resilience or reliance, depending on the market or region, print circulation and advertising account for 44.6% of average revenues among our survey respondents.
As a result, many publishers continue to invest in print, while at the same time seeking to diversify and grow their digital offerings. However, the need for diversification is all the more acute given that print increasingly accounts for a smaller and smaller percentage of overall publisher revenues.
This is the first time we have seen income from print drop to below 50% of total income. In our 2023 survey, combined income from print advertising and circulation delivered more than half (57.5%) of revenues across our respondent base. A year previously, in our 2022–23 report, that figure had stood at 53.5%. A drop of 12.5% since last year demonstrates the urgency with which news publishers need to reduce their print dependence.
The revenue mix of Mediahuis, a leading European news publisher, exemplifies this dichotomy. At present, around 70% of their income comes from print, compared to 30% via digital. Yet, their 1.8 million subscribers are almost equally split across these mediums. The company aims to flip its revenue model by the end of the decade. The goal is “to go from 70/30 to 30/70 in seven years. And if we are there by 2030 then we can say that we are a digitally sustainable company,” Mediahuis chief executive Gert Ysebaert explained at WAN-IFRA’s World News Media Congress 2024 in Copenhagen in May.
Elsewhere, reminding us of print’s continued importance, some publishers are leaning further into the medium, while at the same time also endeavouring to expand their digital revenues.
The US-based magazine The Atlantic, for example, has prospered with a growing digital subscription business. They now have more than 1 million subscribers, and towards the end of Q1 2024, they also reported that booked advertising was up 33% from 2023.
Subsequently, in October 2024, The Atlantic declared that as a result of subscription growth and a return to profitability, they would return to monthly editions of its print publication. The title had been published 10 times a year for the past 22 years. “More people subscribe to our print magazine than at any time since its birth in 1857,” noted Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who shared that they would also be increasing their coverage of defense, national security, and technology issues.
The move signifies part of a remarkable turnaround for the brand. Just four years ago, at the height of COVID, the company had a $20 million deficit and was forced to lay off 68 staffers, akin to 17% of total employees. This was despite its coverage of the pandemic being widely praised.
At WAN-IFRA’s Indian Printers Summit, Janhavi Pawar, Director of Sakal Media Group shared how they had recently launched three new print products, as well as a digital subscription, targeting Gen Z.
This might be an audience that publishers don’t think will be attracted to print, but Sakal believes otherwise.
A new ‘phygital’ product (below), which features a four-page supplement of custom games within the print newspaper, broke even on its first day.
Nevertheless, more widely, the predominant trend is a different one: with news publishers grappling with the need to maintain the value of their print products, while at the same time seeking to reduce their reliance on this revenue stream.
As part of this picture, it’s also worth remembering that not every print news outlet finds the medium profitable or sustainable. In some cases, news publishers have determined that the heavy costs associated with print media, coupled with continuing shifts in consumer habits, means that print operations are no longer financially viable. In response, outlets have reduced the frequency of print publications, the number of pages and the amount of original content (i.e. non-wire copy) that they offer, or ceased printing altogether.
This landscape therefore, remains a complex one. For some news outlets, print advertising and circulation remains at the heart of their sources of income. Others are cutting back, looking to reduce print expenditure, or divest their print interests.
It’s clear that there is no cookie-cutter model here.
Nonetheless, across our sample, although print’s share of the total revenue pie has now dropped below 50% for the first time, and by 12% in 2 years, print remains a substantial portion of the revenue pie.
This underlines how revenue mixes are changing, and why publishers must continually look to adapt their revenue strategies in response to changing markets and consumer behaviours.
Growth in digital revenues
In contrast to print, digital revenues — both in terms of online advertising and reader subscriptions — have increased by 7% year-on-year.
Digital revenues, derived from both advertising and circulation, now account for nearly a third (31.6%) of total revenues, as news publishers continue to explore opportunities for online paywalls, paid apps and other verticals.
Demonstrating this need for digital diversification, both Reuters and CNN introduced paywalls in the past year. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the Reuters news site “has [previously] been free for consumers since 1995,” attracting 45–50 million unique viewers a month, from 240 countries and territories around the world.
Meanwhile, the leading Spanish newspaper El País launched a digital US edition, which “aspires to be the informative voice and meeting place of the Latino universe in the North American country.” EL PAÍS US targets the 60 million plus Spanish-speaking people in the United States, and builds off separate editions that are already produced in Mexico, Columbia, Chile and Argentina.
Other major publishers have introduced new subscription tiers for their existing products. One such outlet, The Economist launched a subscription model for their audio content, Economist Podcasts+. Subscribers get access to all of their podcasts, as well as a limited number of free articles each month, and several newsletters. Access to all articles and newsletters, or the ability to attend a subscriber event, requires an upgrade to a full digital subscription.
At the same time, The New York Times made its podcast archive subscription-only. A standalone podcast subscription costs $6/month and $50/year. In announcing the move, Ben Cotton, head of subscription growth at The Times, explained that “our audio journalism connects The Times with millions of people every day.”
“…Now we’re taking a significant step forward in transforming this powerful connection into a key driver of our subscription business.”
These moves demonstrate the optimism that some publishers have audiences paying for audio products, as well as the importance that audio and podcasts can play in the subscription funnel.
Alongside these moves, we also continue to see publishers looking to grow digital revenues through investment in Games, as well as new verticals and other products and packages.
In the USA, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution launched a campaign at the start of the year that offered new digital subscribers access for $1.99/week. For life. The only condition? You have to remain a subscriber.
One potentially cautionary tale for this type of pricing offer was also seen this year. Readers who took out a $99 lifetime subscription to Rolling Stone earlier in the millennium, found that they would no longer receive print copies of the magazine, but rather a PDF replica of each issue.
“It’s not the same thing, getting a PDF. You can’t touch it, you can’t feel it, Samir Husni, a magazine consultant and former Professor at the University of Mississippi, told Slate.
Husni, who is known to many as “Mr. Magazine” also noted other issues with this approach.
“I mean, how would I know it’s the genuine real thing? Anyone can fake a PDF these days,” he added.
Other income streams are becoming more prominent
The importance of diversifying revenue streams is also reflected in the finding that ”other income” grew by 5% year-on-year. Collectively, this category — which encompasses activities such as e-commerce, events and licensing — now accounts for nearly a quarter (23.8%) of revenues across our complete sample.
Within this “other” category, events are — by a considerable margin — the leading activity that news publishers are leaning into. The pre-COVID enthusiasm for this potential revenue stream appears to have returned, driven by the opportunity to generate income through sponsorships, ticket sales, and paid exhibitors, as well as formats which include in-person, online and hybrid possibilities.
Nigeria’s BusinessDay is an example of a news publisher that has leaned heavily into events, organizing dozens every year across a range of audiences and formats. At WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Africa conference in Nairobi, they revealed that events now account for around 32% of the publisher’s annual revenues, and about 40% of its profitability.
Alongside this, we also saw considerable consistency in the value attributed by news publishers to a number of other specific revenue streams. This includes grant funding (16% said it was their most important non-advertising and reader revenue source in 2024, vs.15% in 2023), partnerships with platforms (12% vs.15%) and business services (14% vs.15%).
The Digital News Report 2024, from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, places this type of activity in the context of stilted subscription growth and a challenging advertising market. “In this context, and with similar pressures all over the world, we are seeing news media looking to introduce or strengthen reader payment models such as subscription, membership, and donation,” they observe.
Among our survey respondents, one interesting area of differentiation in 2024 can be seen in attitudes towards memberships. In 2023, just 5% of our sample said this would be an important revenue source. By 2024, that had grown to 13%, perhaps reflecting the maturity of this income stream, and its proven track record at an increasing number of news outlets.
In Argentina, the digital news outlet Cenital derived more than half of their income in 2023 from their “Best Friends,” a term they apply to those who contribute to their membership programme. Meanwhile, at The Daily Maverick in South Africa, their membership program — Maverick Insider — now accounts for 40% of overall revenues.
Among our sample, more than a quarter of respondents (28%) told us that their organization already has a membership or contribution model.
Contributions, in the form of donations, may not come with the types of perks often associated with membership models (e.g. content that is ad-free or features reduced ads, member/subscriber only content, early access to events etc.). Nevertheless, donations are becoming more commonplace due to the rise of non-profit media outlets and campaigns like those run by The Guardian.
Alongside this, micropayments appear to be in vogue once more.
The digital landscape is littered with examples of failed attempts to make this model work. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) back in 2020, the British journalist James Ball contended that “micropayments will never be a thing in journalism.” More recently, as a newsletter from The Fix in September put it, “micropayments in news have long been an appealing idea that hasn’t worked in practice.”
One reason for this might be that the models deployed by publishers have tended to focus on pay-per-article, or daily access models. Countering this, The Washington Post has been experimenting with a week-long package. The price being offered changes (from $4 to $10) depending on a number of consumer variables, staff at Nieman Lab found.
Offering a longer “trial” to content from the Post may be one way to help convert readers to other longer, more expensive, subscription tiers.
For Kevin Anderson and James Kember at PugPig, micropayments should be seen “as part of a subscription journey.”
Broadening the definition to include “micro” subscriptions, they point to products like FT Edit, which offers eight stories a day from the Financial Times, as “a gateway to allow the brands to establish a relationship and habit with a user, whilst enabling the publisher to monetise the relationship with those people that will never pay for a full rate subscription.”
A look at the FT’s pricing structure would seem to reinforce this view. At $4.99 a month for US consumers, FT Edit offers a very different price point to full subscriptions which range from $39 a month for digital access, and a $75 premium digital product.
As we will see in later sections of this report, these diversification efforts play out against a varied backdrop in terms of profitability, business confidence and proposed areas for investment. What we can discern, however, is that publishers are being required to focus on revenue generation that goes beyond monies from circulation (sales and subscriptions) and advertising, examples of which will be illustrated throughout this report.
About the Author
Damian Radcliffe is a journalist, researcher, and professor based at the University of Oregon. He holds the Chambers Chair in Journalism and is a Professor of Practice, an affiliate faculty member of the Department for Middle East and North Africa Studies (MENA) and the Agora Journalism Center, and a Research Associate of the Center for Science Communication Research (SCR).
He is an expert on digital trends, social media, technology, the business of media, the evolution of present-day journalistic practice, and the role played by media and technology in the Middle East.
