Media Briefing: What media execs are prioritizing in 2025

Last year was defined by ad revenue improvements, AI licensing (and lawsuits), referral traffic issues, the cookie apocalypse that wasn’t, and newsroom shakeups.

This year, publishers are reinvesting in growth opportunities – and trying to move away from platform dependency for traffic and revenue. Here’s what media representatives will prioritize this year:

Growing engagement for subscriptions and ad revenue

The number one business goal this year for companies like Business Insider, Hearst Magazines and BuzzFeed is to increase engagement to help drive subscription and advertising revenue.

For publishers like Business Insider, increased engagement across platforms like their website, apps, newsletters and live events can help convert casual readers to subscribers and attract premium advertisers this year, according to Maggie Milnamow, CRO at Business Insider and senior head of group sales at Axel Springer.

Lisa Ryan Howard, who oversees Hearst Magazines’ advertising business as global CRO, said engagement is the company’s “north star” for developing audiences and advertising experiences.

Hearst Magazines saw “significant growth” in its direct-sold advertising business last year, according to Howard, without disclosing evidence of that success, largely thanks to Hearst’s expansion of large ad formats and a new predictive AI targeting tool that is now part of nearly 30% of Hearst Magazine’s campaigns since launching last summer.

Ken Blom, BuzzFeed’s chief commercial officer, said the company is focused on creating engaging products — such as comment and discussion hubs, games and AI-powered generators and filters — to help BuzzFeed build better advertising and content marketing “at moments with higher quality. ”

Execs at the Financial Times want to better understand their audience and use data and first-party marketing technology to create more personalized experiences on their websites and apps, Fiona Spooner, managing director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group, told the FT.

Strengthening the subscriber base

A number of publishers told Digiday they will focus on growing their subscription businesses this year, including those at Bloomberg, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal.

Digiday+ Research Study published in November found that 83% of publisher professionals in Q3 said they would focus at least very little on building their subscription business in the next six months, up from just 67% in Q3 last year.

Karen Saltser, CEO of Bloomberg Media, said the company has three “north stars” for growth — total revenue, monthly audience across platforms and paying customers — but subscriptions are pass-through.

“For us, video, audio and events drive engagement with potential and active subscribers. And the healthier that audience is, the more value we bring to premium advertisers. Those relationships are still a significant part of our business,” said Saltser.

The company will continue to iterate on its subscription offerings this year, she added. For example, last month Bloomberg introduced a newsletter package subscription for its tech coverage, marking the first time a publisher has offered paid content separate from a full Bloomberg website and app subscription.

Meanwhile, The Atlantic reached its goal of 1 million subscribers last year, and this year we will focus on continuing to grow subscriptions as well as build on the profitability that the company achieved in early 2024, according to Alice McKown, publisher and chief revenue officer. officer and Megha Garibaldi, Director of Growth.

Nolly Evans, CEO of The Wall Street Journal Digital, said the publisher will continue to focus on growing subscribers this year after The Wall Street Journal grew its digital-only subscribers by 10% year-over-year to 3.9 million subscribers. according to third quarter earnings.

Selling multiple advertising sponsors

The heads of publishers BDG, Future, Newsweek and Vox Media said they aim to increase direct advertising revenue through editorial collaborations and event sponsorships.

Seventy-one percent of publishing professionals who responded to the Digiday+ Research study said they would focus largely or very heavily on building their directly sold ads in the next six months.

Newsweek is also looking to expand its “rankings” business — where it highlights the best places to work and invest, for example, said Danielle Varvaro, Newsweek’s head of sales.

According to Wesley Bonner, head of social and audience development at BDG, BDG will invest in more branded social programming and talent collaborations. Geoff Schiller, Vox Media CRO, said the company wants to continue to grow sponsorships for its editorial franchises after experiencing year-over-year growth in this area in 2024.

Elizabeth Bagdasarian, svp, Future’s U.S. business, which primarily oversees sales across the company’s fashion, beauty and home titles, said diversification is her top priority this year. This means offering sponsorship opportunities across the Future portfolio, including in-person experiences, newsletters and live purchases. It could also mean more AI products. Last year, Future’s Who What Wear launched an AI chatbot that provides recommendations tailored to readers’ budgets and style specifications. Products like this chatbot can be sold to advertisers, such as having a retailer sponsor a chatbot that generates Christmas gift ideas, Bagdasarian said.

Expanding your reach

Last year’s US presidential election helped increase reach and engagement for some publishersand media officials hope to maintain that pace this year.

According to Taylor Scott, head of product, The Hill is focused on expanding its videos, podcasts, events and memberships in 2025 to reach more audiences. Video viewing and podcast listening will see double-digit growth in 2024, he noted, without providing numbers.

At The Economist, the goal is also reach – to help increase subscriptions and engagement. This, according to Luke Bradley-Jones, president of The Economist, means upgrading The Economist app to offer a better and more personalized user experience and investing in more brand marketing. He noted that The Economist had “record traffic” on its website and app, and just last week the publisher had its highest week of new subscribers since 2021.

Reach is also number one on the BBC. “My primary goal in 2025 is deliberately straightforward: to extend the reach and relevance of the BBC here in the US and more widely outside the UK,” said Ben Goldberger, GM and managing director of editorial content at BBC Studios.

Sara Badler, who has become senior advertising director for North America at Guardian News & Media last Septembershe said her aim this year is for her new revenue team to “dramatically increase awareness of everything the Guardian and its huge US audience has to offer”.

What will be released in 2025?

So what are publishing execs leaving behind this year? Five directors told Digiday that they continue to move away from a reliance on other platforms for traffic and revenue.

“Finding higher volumes is not as much of a priority as it was last year,” said The Hill’s Scott. “2025 is not an election year and there is simply not enough audience interest to sustain our business. What this year offers is a comprehensive political news cycle of policies and legislation coming from government that affects ordinary citizens.

McKown and Garibaldi of The Atlantic said they were moving away from “volatile” transportation platforms and focusing on direct relationships with audiences.

“No one owes publishers free traffic or free revenue,” said Jon Roberts, chief innovation officer at Dotdash Meredith. “We need to be essential to our readers and our advertising clients.”

What we heard

“I would like the industry to respond even more quickly to cultural moments and trends [versus] they need long lead times for planning and production. In the era of culture and brands living on social media, we need to be faster and move as fast as the consumer expects.”

— Chris Anthony, CRO at Gallery Media Group

Numbers to know

200: The number of journalists at The New York Times sports website The Athletic who want management to acknowledge that their union newsrooms will join the Times Guild.

40%: Amount of The Washington Post’s content deemed “unsafe” by advertisers due to news avoidance issues.

4%: A percentage of The Washington Post’s total workforce is being laid off on the business side.

4000: Number of job cuts in UK and US journalism in 2024 vs. 2023.

What we discussed

Publishers have focused on softer news and more social media in preparation for a second Trump era

• When Donald Trump becomes president later this month, some news outlets will shift their focus from softer news to more social media monitoring and engagement to cover his second term.
• But other publishers say it’s still too early to make any significant changes to editorial strategy and see no point in shifting resources or coverage plans for now.

Read more about how publishers are preparing for Trump’s return here.

Revenue tactics and TikTok were some of the biggest topics of 2024 for publishers

• According to studies by Digiday+ Research, monetization tactics and TikTok were among the topics that most interested publishers last year.
• Direct-sold ads, branded content and subscriptions will be the biggest focuses for publishers in 2025.

Read more from the Digiday+ Research 2024 Summary here.

Timeline of major deals between publishers and AI companies

• The wave of deals between AI companies and publishers first started with an agreement between the Associated Press and OpenAI in July 2023, with new deals being announced almost every month in 2024.
• Publishers have signed contracts with companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, ProRata and Perplexity.

See a timeline of deals between publishers and AI here.

Google Discover Referral Traffic Increases in 2024 Due to Steady Decline in Social Media Referrals

• Publishers saw an increase in traffic from Google Discover – and Google Search’s generative AI functionality did not negatively impact publisher site traffic.
• Social platforms such as Instagram, Reddit, and Threads besides Facebook drive marginal traffic to publisher sites these days.

Read how traffic from referrals by publishers has changed in 2024 here.

What we read

Meta is bringing political content back to its social platforms

Meta is bringing political content back to Facebook, Instagram and Threads after phasing out political content from those sources in 2021 as part of larger changes to its content moderation policies, TechCrunch reported. This content will be served to users based on their personalized signals and provide more control.

New Google TV summarizes news content

Google unveiled the latest version of its TV operating system at CES, which uses the company’s Gemini AI assistant to summarize the biggest news of the day, culling news from around the Internet and headlines from YouTube news channel videos, TechCrunch reported. Its launch is planned for the end of this year.

Time employees worry about getting along with Trump

Interviews with a dozen current and former employees reveal concerns about owner Marc Benioff’s embrace of President-elect Donald Trump and changes in the business over the past few years that have focused on developing close ties to powerful people, according to the San Francisco Standard.

Reuters, Gannett sell bundled subscriptions

Reuters and Gannett teamed up this quarter to sell subscription packages aimed at smaller media companies that want access to more content. Reuters will sell the package and Gannett will get a share of the proceeds, Axios reports. The subscription will include news, photos, graphics and video, but will not include access to games and puzzles from Gannett’s newspaper brands.