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. 

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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.

What industry leaders are reading this week

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