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Digiday+ Research: Branded content rebounds as a top source of publisher revenue
This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →
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High-quality content is publishers’ most important strategy when it comes to growing ad revenue, and branded content is moving up the ranks among publishers’ revenue sources. This year, it’s their No. 2 revenue source, after publishers started putting a bigger focus on growing that part of their business in 2024.
This is according to Digiday+ Research surveys of publisher professionals conducted annually in the first quarter.
Digiday’s survey found that publishers’ branded content revenue is seeing a big rebound this year, after trending downward since 2021. Ninety-four percent of publisher pros said in Q1 2025 that they get at least a very small portion of their revenue from branded content — putting it in second place among publishers’ revenue sources, behind direct-sold ads. This is a significant jump from Q1 2024, when less than three-quarters of publishers (72%) said branded content accounted for at least a very small portion of their revenue.
In Q1 2021, 87% of publisher pros told Digiday they got at least a very small portion of their revenue from branded content, which fell to 85% in Q1 2023, before hitting 72% in Q1 2024 — making this year’s jump to 94% feel significant.
Interestingly, the percentage of publishers who said they make a lot of money from branded content is seeing an upward trend. This year, more than a third (35%) of publisher pros said they get a large or very large portion of their revenue from branded content, up from 31% in 2024 and one-quarter (25%) in 2023.
Digiday’s survey found that this rebound in branded content revenue correlates to publishers’ focus on building that part of their business. The percentage of publishers who said they had plans to focus a lot on building their branded content business jumped significantly in 2024, and that growth in focus seems to have paid off in 2025 with a big jump in branded content revenue.
More than half of publishers (53%) told Digiday in Q1 2024 that they would put a large or very large focus on building their branded content business in the coming months, up from 41% in Q1 2023. This year, that percentage looks like it will remain fairly steady, with exactly half of publisher pros (50%) saying they will keep up a large or very large focus on building their branded content business in the next six months.
Similar to the pattern for publishers’ branded content revenue, the percentage of publishers who said they would put any focus at all on building their branded content business saw a big jump this year following a downward trend. Eighty-seven percent of publisher pros said in Q1 2025 that they would put at least a very small focus on building their branded content business, up from just under three-quarters (74%) in Q1 2024.
That jump to 87% is certainly significant, but it still isn’t as high as it was a few years ago. In Q1 2021, 90% of publishers said they had plans to put at least a very small focus on building their branded content business. That percentage fell slightly to 87% in Q1 2022 and again to 86% in Q1 2023, before hitting 74% in Q1 2024.
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