Digiday+ Research: News Subscription Index 2024

How Gannett, The Wall Street Journal and others are leaning into subscriptions for a more stable revenue stream Recently, Digiday+ members have been exploring our [latest research](, which examines how publications like The New York Times, Vox, USA Today and others are approaching pricing and discounts, content-gating strategies and member benefits. Research findings are available to Digiday+ members, one of the many perks of a membership. Get a glimpse of this exclusive content below, and [subscribe]( for full access to all of our original research, weekly briefings, reports and guides, member events and more. [Digiday+ Research News Subscription Index 2024: Washington Post, Vox shift their strategies]( By Li Lu, research director The publishing industry faced volatile times throughout most of 2024. The L.A. Times, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post all laid off staff in the last year. Along with those layoffs, publishers have also been hit by major changes within the advertising industry as a result of Google’s revision to its cookie deprecation plan. Many publishers were prepared to work around Google’s original plan to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome by investing in alternative IDs and building up their own first-party data stores. Now, some publishers have had to reevaluate their ad strategies significantly. Additionally, many publishers rely on subscriptions as a main revenue stream. However, some advertisers have been “news avoidant” due to the upcoming U.S. presidential election and overseas wars and conflicts making headlines. It’s possible that the uncertainty with ad sales could push publishers to look to their subscription products as a more reliable revenue stream. In fact, in recent earnings calls, Gannett, The New York Times and The Wall Street journal announced year-over-year growth for digital-only subscriptions. Gannett, which owns USA Today, reported that its digital-only subscriptions business broke new records in Q2 2024, growing about 22% year over year, and The New York Times hit 10 million digital-only subscribers, with 300,000 digital-only subscribers added in Q2 2024. [KEEP READING]( What industry leaders are reading this week [How Business Insider’s AI-based paywall strategy increased conversions by 75%]( [Media Buying Briefing: Who controls the balance of power between retail media and media agencies?]( [Future of TV Briefing: How publishers are turning podcasts into video talk shows]( [Pitch deck: How X’s ‘real-time’ factor has become the star of its latest pitch to advertisers]( Unlock unlimited access to stories and so much more when you [subscribe](. [Share]( [Tweet]( [Share]( [Forward]( Digiday Media 462 7th Ave Office 06-01 New York, NY 10018 You received this email because you're signed up to receive email from Digiday. Unsubscribing will remove you from ALL Digiday email. [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](