It’s limited to the UK’s publishing industry, but I was nevertheless intrigued by a recent Press Gazette article which broke down the digital-publishing revenue numbers released by AOP and Deloitte’s Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index (DPRI).
Yes, the Q4 2024 overall revenue was technically down 0.02% YoY, but what caught my interest were what Press Gazette’s Richard Reeves called “tentative signs that publishers may soon be free from these revenue doldrums.”
Digital Publishing Growth Indicators
“In recent years, plummeting display advertising revenues have cancelled out growth achieved across other revenue streams,” writes Reeves, “but, in Q4 2024 — for the first time since Q1 2023 — they didn’t budge. Fingers crossed that this continues.”
(Source: Association of Online Publishers)
The report only looked at numbers from 13 digital publishers — 9 B2C and 4 B2B publishers — but did find a larger percentage (60%) reporting revenue growth than the 30% from the quarter before. Between that small sample size and Press Gazette’s general warning that the report “represents the UK’s major publishing groups, thus its findings shouldn’t be seen as a barometer of the digital publishing sector at large,” there are clearly asterisks to pin onto any hopes.
I guess I, like many publishers over here, just come by optimism honestly.
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