Digiday+ Research: More than half of publishers reported revenue increases in 2024

Digiday’s survey found that well over half of publishers said their revenues were up at the end of 2024. Fifty-eight percent of publisher pros said in Q4 that their 2024 revenues were higher compared with 2023. Meanwhile, barely over a quarter of publishers (28%) said their revenues were down last year.

This is a big improvement over 2023, when just over a third of publisher pros (36%) told Digiday that their revenues were up for the year compared with 2022. The improvement wasn’t unexpected — 58% of publishers said in Q4 2023 that they agreed their ad revenue would grow in 2024.

What’s more, Digiday’s Q4 2024 survey found that a significant percentage of publishers said their revenues were up by more than just a little last year over 2023. More than a quarter of publisher pros (26%) told Digiday that their companies’ revenues were up between 11% and 25% in 2024. That doesn’t make this group of publishers the largest in Digiday’s survey — 28% of publishers said their 2024 revenues were up between 1% and 10% — but it comes very close.

And for the publishers who said their revenues were down in 2024 compared with 2023, the largest group by far said their revenues were down only slightly. Eighteen percent of publisher pros told Digiday that their companies’ revenues were down between 1% and 10% in 2024, while just 6% said they were down between 11% and 25% and an even smaller 4% said they were down 26% or more.

It’s no surprise, then, that publishers told Digiday they feel like their companies had a successful year in 2024. Just short of two-thirds of publisher pros (64%) agree that their companies had a successful 2024. In comparison, just 20% of publishers disagreed that 2024 was a successful year for their companies.

Notably, though, most publishers who said 2024 was a successful year for them weren’t exactly in strong agreement. Forty-nine percent of publisher pros told Digiday that they agreed only somewhat that their companies had a successful 2024. Just 16% agreed strongly.

This leads into Digiday’s survey findings that, while most publishers considered 2024 a successful year for their companies, that sentiment doesn’t extend to the media industry as a whole — more than half of publishers said 2024 was not a successful year for the industry.

To be exact, 53% of publisher pros told Digiday that they disagreed that the media industry had a successful 2024. Just 7% agreed. (Forty percent couldn’t say either way.)

Similarly to how publishers didn’t feel strongly that their companies had a successful year in 2024, though, publishers also didn’t feel strongly that the industry didn’t have a successful year. Thirty-six percent of publisher pros told Digiday they disagreed only somewhat that the media industry had a successful year last year, compared with 18% who disagreed strongly.

To help explain the sentiment that individual companies were successful in 2024 but the media industry still struggled overall, we can go a bit deeper into publishers’ business decisions last year. For instance, while half of publishers kept the number of titles they publish steady throughout last year, more than half increased the number of ad products they offer.

Fifty-four percent of publisher pros told Digiday that the number of advertising products their companies offered increased since the start of 2024. Forty percent said the number of ad products they offered stayed the same, and just 6% said their ad products decreased last year. But for those publishers who increased their ad products in 2024, it wasn’t by a significant amount. Fifty percent of publisher pros said their ad products increased just somewhat during 2024. Only 4% said they increased significantly.

The types of ad products that publishers added last year indicate a bit of a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of attitude on the part of publishers. No one ad product type came out as the far and away leader when Digiday asked publisher pros what kind of ad products they added in 2024. Branded content products represented the largest percentage in Digiday’s survey, with just short of a quarter of publishers (23%) saying they added that type of product last year. Direct-sold ad and event sponsorship products tied for second at 15%, and programmatic ad and AI-driven, ad-supported ad products tied for third at 12%.

It’s also worth noting here that one-third of publisher pros (33%) did say they increased the number of titles their companies publish in 2024. While a much larger 53% said they maintained their number of titles in 2024, that 33% is still significant. Only 14% of publishers said the number of titles they publish decreased last year.