Digiday+ Research: Subscriptions and events gain steam among publishers’ most significant sources of revenue

That’s according to Digiday+ Research surveys conducted among publisher professionals every six months.

Digiday’s survey found that, once again, direct-sold ads are publishers’ No. 1 revenue source this year. In fact, every single respondent to Digiday’s Q1 2025 survey said they get at least a very small portion of their revenue from direct-sold ads (98% had said the same in Q1 2024). Programmatic ads held strong between last year and this year, keeping its fourth-place spot among the revenue sources included in Digiday’s survey. Eighty-five percent of publisher pros said in Q1 of this year that they get at least a very small portion of their revenue from programmatic ads, on par with the 86% who said the same in Q1 of last year.

The rest of publishers’ top five revenue sources this year do look different from last year, though. To start, branded content moved up one spot in the rankings to No. 2 this year. 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, up from 88% in Q1 2024. And video advertising fell from second place to third place. Eighty-seven percent of publisher pros said at the beginning of this year that they get at least a little revenue from video ads, down slightly from 91% during the same time last year.

Affiliate commerce made a big jump in the rankings this year, from the seventh spot in Q1 2024 to fifth in Q1 2025. Nearly three-quarters of publisher pros (73%) said this year that they get at least a very small portion of revenue from affiliate commerce, up from just over two-thirds (68%) last year.

Subscriptions, on the other hand, fell out of the top five revenue sources completely this year.  In Q1 2024, subscriptions ranked fifth among publishers’ revenue sources, with 74% of publisher pros saying they got at least a little revenue from subscriptions. This year, subscriptions came in sixth place, with a slightly lower 70% of publishers saying they make money from subscriptions.

However, despite subscriptions’ drop from publishers’ top five revenue sources, subscriptions, along with events, grew significantly as a source of a large amount of publishers’ revenue from last year to this year, Digiday’s survey found.

When breaking out publishers’ most significant sources of revenue this year, direct-sold ads came out on top again, and by a wide margin: 62% of publisher pros told Digiday in Q1 2025 that they get a large or very large portion of their revenue from direct-sold ads up from 53% in Q1 2024. Branded content came next, with 35% of publishers saying it accounts for a large or very large portion of their revenue.

Branded content’s second-place spot is a change from last year, when 31% of publishers said it was a large source of revenue, putting it in third place Q1 2024. Branded content swapped spots with programmatic ads: One-third of publishers (33%) said in Q1 last year that they got a large or very large portion of their revenue from programmatic ads, compared with 35% in Q1 this year, making it the No. 2 source of a large amount of publishers’ revenue in 2025.

Subscriptions and events mark two major changes to publishers’ revenue formulas for 2025, according to Digiday’s survey. Twenty-four percent of publisher pros said in Q1 this year that they get a large or very large portion of their revenue from subscriptions, putting it in the fourth-place spot among publishers’ most important sources of revenue this year, followed by events in the fifth-place spot, with 23% of publishers saying that is a source of a large amount of revenue. This is a big jump from Q1 last year, when just 7% of publishers were getting a large or very large portion of their revenue from subscriptions and 8% were making a lot from events.

Looking at a detailed breakdown of publishers’ revenue sources in Q1 2025 compared with Q1 2024, Digiday’s survey found that when it comes to publishers’ most important revenue sources (i.e. the ones from which they get a large or very large portion of their revenue), there’s less of a steep drop-off this year among the revenue sources that rank highest for publishers in 2025.

Outside of direct-sold ads, which continues to be the dominant source of publishers’ revenue heading into this year, the difference between the No. 2 and No. 5 sources that account for a large or very large portion of publishers’ revenue is 12 percentage points as of Q1 2025, compared with 22 percentage points in Q1 2024. This could be indicative that publishers are diversifying their revenue sources more this year, with subscriptions and events playing a much more notable role for publishers’ businesses this year compared with last year.