Publishers’ most important strategy to move forward

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 16/04/2021

Accelerating the digital transformation is publishers’ most important strategy to move forward with 44% of respondents stressing this in a survey by WAN-IFRA for the annual World Press Trends report. News executives don’t consider the short-term impact of the pandemic as the biggest risk to their organisation’s future success.

Instead, greatest threats are the ongoing decline of news publishers’ share of the advertising market, (30.6%) and inability to diversity revenues (21%).

43% said revenues declined by more than 20% “in the last 12 months”. Another 7% said theirs declined by more than 10%. On average, overall revenue was down by 11%. However, 17% reported an increase in revenues last year with 11% saying revenues were up more than 20%.

Digital circulation revenue has been a positive development for many news organisations as publishers report a 26.9% YoY increase in 2020.

“While that figure is impressive, it’s worth noting that globally the industry is still predominantly dependent on advertising and print revenue: Digital circulation revenue makes up just 6.1% of publishers’ overall revenue (core revenue streams)”, the report says.

65% of publishers believe their business will fully recover from the pandemic; 35% don’t.

Nearly 60% of publishers say their staff will either work from home or have the option to work from home going forward. 5% expect to move everyone back to the office and 16% believe they’ll use less real estate going forward.