Digiday+ Research’s 2025 ad snapshot: Are publishers becoming less dependent on ad revenue?

That’s according to Digiday+ Research surveys conducted among publisher professionals at the beginning of each year.

Digiday’s surveys found that publishers think they’ll be slightly less dependent on advertising revenue this year than last year. In Q1 2025, 45% of publisher pros said 61% or more of their companies’ revenues will come from advertising this year, compared with 51% who said the same in Q1 2024. At the same time, 39% of publishers said this year that advertising will account for 21% to 60% of their revenue, compared with 26% last year.

In other words, the percentage of publishers who depend on advertising for a large chunk of their revenue has decreased over the last year, while the percentage who depend on ads for a moderate amount of revenue has increased.

And publishers think this trend will continue into next year.

Even fewer publisher pros told Digiday in Q1 2025 that they expect most of their revenue to come from advertising in 2026. Thirty-eight percent of publishers said they think 61% or more of their revenue will come from advertising in 2026. (Remember, 45% said the same about 2025.) And more than half (56%) said ads will account for 21% to 60% of their revenue in 2026, compared with 39% in 2025 — a significant jump.

So, given publishers’ dependence on ad revenue, how are they tracking the success of their ad businesses this year? Digiday’s Q1 survey found that the vast majority of publishers look to total ad revenue as their main measurement of success when it comes to advertising (no surprise here). Eighty-six percent of publisher pros said that total ad revenue is the most significant metric for measuring their ad revenue outcomes.

Following ad revenue, Digiday’s survey found that CPM is the second-most important metric for ads this year. More than two-thirds of publisher pros (69%) said that CPM/effective CPM is the most significant metric for measuring their ad revenue outcomes in 2025.

Nearly half (48%) said ad pricing and yield is the most important metric for ad revenue success this year, and more than a third (38%) said the same of both ad campaign performance and ad renewal/rebooking rate.

And when it comes to growing ad revenue this year, Digiday’s survey found that, at the end of the day, publishers’ businesses are all about the content. (Not a particularly profound piece of information, but certainly a comforting one.) More than two thirds of publisher pros (69%) told Digiday in Q1 of this year that producing high-quality content is the strategy that plays the most significant role in ad revenue uplift.

Ad optimization and data are also up there for publishers this year, which makes sense as we all settle into the age of AI. Fifty-nine percent of publishers said that optimizing ad performance plays the most significant role in lifting their ad revenue, followed by data and analytics, which 55% said is most significant. Meanwhile, 45% of publisher pros said audience-based campaigns/segmentation is most important to ad revenue uplift, and 41% said the same of native advertising.