Media Briefing: The top trends in the media industry for 2025

• 2025 in review
• Google pledges to add more source links, iHeartMedia signs video podcast deal with Netflix, and more.

2025 in review

As we approach the end of a transformative year in the media industry, we’re taking a moment to look back at some of the key trends that defined 2025.

Here are some of the major themes from Digiday’s reporting over the course of the year:

Revenue performance in 2025

Let’s first look at revenue performance.

Digital advertising businesses got off to a slow start this year, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, an uncertain economic climate and pressures on programmatic ad revenue from declining traffic all having a negative impact on ad spend. But by the end of this year, there was a notable tone shift among publishing execs, who said the fourth quarter was pacing well. Many felt optimistic that they would continue to see digital ad revenue growth year over year in 2026.

Digital advertising revenues were mostly flat year over year in Q1 2025, according to earnings reports for public digital media companies like BuzzFeed, Dotdash Meredith, Gannett and News Corp’s Dow Jones business, which includes The Wall Street Journal. 

But in the latest round of earnings reports from six publicly traded publishers, four reported increases in digital advertising revenue in Q3 2025 year over year, including News Corp’s Dow Jones businesses, The New York Times, USA Today Co. and Ziff Davis. (However, People Inc. and BuzzFeed saw declines in their programmatic ad revenue in the quarter.)

Some execs were confident their companies would see more ad spend in Q4. The New York Times projected its digital advertising revenue would increase in the mid to high percentages year over year in Q4. People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel said he expects a “solid Q4” for People Inc., with a “return to growth,” despite traffic challenges being a “primary headwind in the business.” Last month, publishers told Digiday Q4 ad spend was pacing ahead compared to the same quarter last year, with some saying they expected single-digit year-over-year increases in digital ad revenue from pending PMP deals and increased premiums on new video products. 

Despite talks of a softer ad market and an uncertain economy, the end of the year isn’t looking too bad. And a few execs said Q1 2026 was already off to a good start, pacing ahead compared to previous years.

Reshaping of AI licensing deal market

Last year’s onslaught of AI content licensing deals between publishers and tech companies continued this year, with a number of new players entering the market. Meta, Microsoft and Amazon announced new AI content licensing deals with publishers in the last six months. 

Deals this year also evolved from tech companies paying publishers for content to train their LLMs to using that content for specific AI-powered products and marketplaces. Amazon signed publishers up to provide content for its AI shopping assistant Rufus and its virtual assistant Alexa+, and Microsoft got publishers to participate in its pay-per-usage AI content marketplace.

Last week, Google announced a commercial pilot program with a range of publishers (including Der Spiegel, El País, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner and The Washington Post, among others) to explore how AI can help drive more engaged audiences.

SEO upheaval, with search traffic and CTR declines

Publishers continued to face declining referral traffic from search and social platforms, while also battling vanishing clickthroughs from search. 

Publishers’ SEO teams had to face existential questions of how to deal with AI search, and whether or not to optimize for those platforms. KPIs are changing from clickthroughs to brand visibility, as more publishers try to focus on conversions rather than scale. 

SEO teams are also gathering more data on AI search, to get a better understanding of how, when and why they’re appearing across platforms and AI products. But they’re also trying to make sense of what the data means for their businesses, especially if the AI platforms aren’t sending much traffic to their sites.

Vertical video and creator networks

There’s nothing new about publishers trying to chase video audiences, as more people choose to consume information in that format. But this year saw a push in the vertical video format in particular, with news outlets like Time, CNN and The New York Times adding more vertical video to their sites and apps in the last few months. Those publishers are adding vertical video feeds to their own properties, both as an audience play and as a way to grow their video advertising businesses, which some execs said will be the biggest growth driver for their companies next year. Some also said videos were more difficult to replicate by AI, compared to text.

Related to their vertical video push, more publishers formed their own creator networks this year, including Yahoo, The Washington Post, CNN, Bustle Digital Group, NBCU and Future.

Publishers are also facing mounting pressure to attract younger generations, who primarily consume news information on social and video platforms. Many publishers are also turning to creators to tap into the demand for this kind of content from advertisers.

What we’ve heard

“Some of the rhetoric is like, poor publishers. They are just getting screwed over, and they deserve so much better. And it’s not like they’re all perfect. Do all these businesses deserve to be successful? They have agency, and they need to figure out a future too. That is how it works… They don’t deserve to know exactly how ChatGPT decides which article to choose. They need to work around that. Even if they’re at the whim of these platforms, that’s just the game. If you don’t like that game, do a different business. Be in a different line of work.”

— An anonymous publishing exec on the lack of transparency and data from big tech companies on AI search.

Numbers to know

61%: The rise in media and telecommunications M&A deal value from the second half of 2024 to the second half of 2025, according to PwC.

400,000: The number of subscribers Inception Point podcasts, which are AI generated, has across Apple and Spotify.

71%: The percentage of podcasters who create either video-only or combined video-and-audio podcasts, compared to 29% that create audio-only podcasts, according to Sounds Profitable.

25%: Host-read podcast ads on YouTube are up to 25% less effective at driving purchases than in audio-only environments, according to Oxford Road and Podscribe.

What we’ve covered

Digiday Scorecard: Publishers rate Big Tech’s AI licensing deals

• AI licensing has gone from niche to crowded fast: Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have entered the fray in the last six months, and publishers are now juggling a growing menu of deals — each with different trade-offs.
• Digiday asked eight publishers for their views on how each tech platform stacks up in 2025 on some key criteria: transparency, money paid to publishers, traffic impact (how much traffic the platform is siphoning away), willingness to license, and the behavior of their crawlers.

Read the scorecard here.

Publishers hunting for AI prompt data are starting to get it from third-party companies

• Next year, tracking AI search visibility may get a little easier for publishers, who need a full arsenal of analytics and monitoring tools to know how, when and why they’re being mentioned across platforms and AI products.
• Tech companies aren’t willing to share this data with publishers or other brands. So new third-party tools are cropping up to gather and report that data, and expanding to show AI visibility in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Read more here.

How The Arena Group is rewriting its commercial playbook for the zero-click era

• With referral traffic under pressure, The Arena Group has shifted focus to keeping people on its sites longer so it can turn those moments of attention into meaningful revenue.
• The company is testing AI-powered content recommendation models to keep readers moving through its network of sites to bump up revenue per session. The publisher expects to add seven figures to its bottom line.

Read more here.

Digiday+ Research: Publishers’ growing focus on video doesn’t translate to social platforms

• A Digiday+ Research survey of 50 publisher professionals found that video-focused social media platforms account for four of the top five platforms publishers currently use, but publishers’ use of two out of four of those platforms has fallen over the last year.
• Instagram and YouTube both saw an increase in publisher use over the last year. But their use of Facebook has been trending downward in the last few years. 

Read the Digiday+ Research report here.

What we’re reading

Google pledges to link more sources in AI Mode

Google said it plans to add more links to sources in its AI search experience AI Mode, according to The Verge. A description of relevant sources will appear above the carousel containing links in AI Mode.

Netflix signs podcast deal with iHeartMedia

At least 15 podcasts produced by iHeartMedia will publish their video episodes exclusively on Netflix beginning in early 2026, according to The New York Times. The streaming service now has about 30 video podcasts lined up for next year.

The Wall Street Journal launches Substack newsletter

The Wall Street Journal is launching an opinion newsletter on its own channels, and for free on Substack, Axios reported. The new section is aimed at expanding WSJ’s opinion coverage to a broader audience.

The Washington Post defends AI podcast 

Though The Washington Post’s AI audio show launched with a myriad of errors, including misattributing or inventing quotes, the publisher is standing by its product, noting its in beta, The Wrap reported.

AP launches verification dashboard

The Associated Press launched AP Verify to help journalists verify text, photos and videos, using tools like an AI chatbot assistant, AI text detection and transcription services, Press Gazette reported.