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It’s barely halfway through January, but publishers are already starting a busy year as they prepare to inaugurate a which may mean another “trump blow”. for them. But before that, about 50 publishing professionals took some time to think about 2024. What they told Digiday+ Research in their Q4 2024 survey is that sales were up last year and media companies had a successful 2024 — but this the success did not extend to the media industry as a whole.
A survey by Digiday found that more than half of publishers said their revenue increased by the end of 2024. Fifty-eight percent of publishing professionals said in the fourth quarter that their revenue in 2024 was higher than in 2023. Meanwhile, just over a quarter of publishers (28%) said their revenue was down last year.
This is a a big improvement over 2023when just over a third of publishing professionals (36%) told Digiday that their revenue has increased this year compared to 2022. The improvement was not unexpected – 58% of publishers in Q4 2023 said they agree that their ad revenue will grow in 2024.
What’s more, Digiday’s Q4 2024 survey found that a significant percentage of publishers said their revenue grew by more than just a little more last year than in 2023. More than a quarter of publishing professionals (26%) said the company Digiday that their companies’ sales have increased. between 11% and 25% in 2024. That doesn’t make this group of publishers the largest in Digiday’s survey — 28% of publishers said 1% to 10% revenue growth in 2024 — but it’s pretty close.
And of the publishers that said their revenue was down in 2024 compared to 2023, by far the largest group said their sales were down only slightly. Eighteen percent of publishing professionals told Digiday that their company’s revenue will decline by 1% to 10% in 2024, while just 6% said it would decline by 11% to 25% and an even smaller 4% said it would decline by 26% or . more.
So it’s no surprise that publishers told Digiday that they felt their companies had a successful year in 2024. Just under two-thirds of publishing professionals (65%) agree that their companies had a successful 2024. By comparison, only 20% of publishers disagreed that 2024 was a successful year for their companies.
However, it’s notable that most publishers who said 2024 was a successful year for them didn’t exactly agree. 49 percent of publishing professionals told Digiday that they only partially agree that their companies have a successful year in 2024. Only 16% strongly agreed.
This leads Digiday’s survey to find that while most publishers saw 2024 as a successful year for their companies, this sentiment did not extend to the media industry as a whole – more than half of publishers said 2024 was not a successful year for the industry.
To be precise, 54% of publishing professionals told Digiday that they disagreed that the media industry had a successful year in 2024. Only 7% agreed. (Forty percent couldn’t say either.)
Just as publishers did not feel strongly that their companies had a successful year in 2024, publishers also did not feel strongly that the industry did not have a successful year. 36 percent of publishing professionals told Digiday that they only somewhat disagreed that the media industry had a successful year last year, compared to 18% who strongly disagreed.
To help explain the sentiment that individual companies were successful in 2024 but the media industry as a whole was still struggling, we can dig a little deeper into publishers’ business decisions last year. For example, while half of the publishers kept the number of published titles stable during the last year, more than half increased the number of advertising products offered.
Fifty-four percent of publishing professionals told Digiday that the number of advertising products offered by their companies has increased since the start of 2024. 40 percent said the number of ad products offered remained the same, and only 6% said their ad products decreased last year. . But for publishers who increased their ad products in 2024, it wasn’t by a significant amount. Fifty percent of publishing professionals say their advertising products will increase somewhat during 2024. Only 4% said they had increased significantly.
The types of ad products that publishers have added in the last year indicate a bit of a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks attitude of publishers. When Digiday asked publishing professionals what kind of ad products they were adding in 2024, no one type of ad product came out as far and away the best. Branded content products represented the largest percentage in Digiday’s survey, with just under a quarter of publishers (23%) saying they had added this type of product in the past year. Direct-sold advertising and event sponsorship products came in second at 15%, and programmatic and AI-driven and ad-supported advertising products came in third at 12%.
Also worth noting here is that one-third of publishing professionals (33%) say they will increase the number of titles their companies publish in 2024. While a much larger 53% said they would maintain their number of degrees in 2024, that 33% is still significant. Only 14% of publishers said the number of titles they published decreased last year.