One year in: DMG Media’s social-only briefs account for 30% of New Media revenue

DMG Media doesn’t break out revenue for its New Media division yet. The wider group reported revenue was £1.92 billion ($2.56 billion) in 2025, per the company.

New Media now includes more than 100 staff and spans 11 brands including Daily Mail, Mail Sport and This Is Money (personal finance for Gen Z), and lifestyle and shopping brand Eliza, using salaried, in-house creators, editorial teams and production staff to create social-first content. 

DMG’s push reflects a broader shift among publishers facing pressure on referral traffic: rather than using social mainly to send audiences to their own sites, they’re building formats people watch in-feed, and selling sponsorships around them.

The shift is also changing how advertisers value publisher-made social, aid Abi Watson, head of publishing for Enders Analysis. “The last year has really seen an acceleration in the recognition and professionalisation of the creator industry, coinciding with the decline in referral traffic,” she said. The growth in social-only briefs at DMG suggests that advertisers increasingly see value in these formats as “destinations in their own right,” rather than simply as extensions of existing publishing brands,” she added.

The social publishing strategy draws on both sides of DMG’s portfolio: established editorial ideas that can be reworked for social, and formats created specifically for the platforms, said Aspell, who was promoted to director of the division in August. It can then sell social-only campaigns while putting its brands in front of younger audiences on platforms such as TikTok, per Aspell. 

Since its launch, the social content has generated a total of 3 billion monthly views and publishes an average of 2,000 pieces (a mix of video and static/carousels) per month on both Instagram and TikTok, per the company. “There might be an 18-year-old who’s never picked up the newspaper, but now is very much aware of the Daily Mail through its social content,” he said.

DMG’s New Media team includes 25 salaried creators who work alongside producers, videographers and editors. Aspell said its creators feature in 90% of branded content and integrating them into its content strategy helps lift engagement across the network by 50%. “That shows a huge appetite for individual and creator-first content,” he said. 

For Aspell, the model means creators are involved in making the work, not simply appearing in front of the camera. “A creator in our world is someone who’s sitting with the videographer and talking about how they’re going to shoot it,” he said. The company owns the IP they develop.

The creator-led approach sits within a broader shift in how the team thinks about social output. Before Aspell joined, he said, a breaking story could generate around 50 posts in two hours — producing huge reach, but dividing engagement across many pieces of content. He pushed instead for a smaller number of higher-quality posts that give audiences more information. He expected views might decline, but said engagement has risen month over month in the past year, while the portfolio still reaches billions of people a month. “That is a testament to us doing quality content, not just quantity,” he added.

The team’s approach to finding creators follows a similar emphasis on potential over scale. Aspell said he looks beyond follower counts when it comes to scouting creators: someone with only 2,000 followers but a real passion for news and strong content might be a good fit for the Daily Mail’s platform to help them grow, he explained. He framed it as finding people with a genuine interest in news and potential; not necessarily chasing the biggest creators. 

He also wants to build more IP around the company’s in-house creators. He is interested in formats built around a distinctive voice, pointing to Goalhanger’s work with Guardian columnist Marina Hyde as a model worth exploring: pairing an established personality with the production and social support to create something of their own. Aspell said DMG is already taking early steps with shows such as “PM for a Day” — launched in August and featuring creator-journalist Mikey Olympitis asking people what they would do if they were prime minister for a day. Meanwhile, Metro’s “Rush Hour Crush” is an example of how it has reworked the newspaper’s dating feature as a social show, with creator Erica Figueiredo trying to connect people in London. He wants to push further into that territory.

The appeal is IP with a recognizable host and a clear premise; not simply another post on a publisher’s page. He cited the popular “Subway Takes” — a show where people are asked to give their “hot takes” while on a subway train — as a standout example of that kind of distinct, personality-led show. For DMG, the next question is how to build more formats that audiences return to, while giving the company new opportunities to work with brands. Currently, it has four to five show formats per 11 of its brands. Watch time is an important metric, and rates vary across the format, but he cited sports format “Now You Know” which averages 30 seconds of watch time, with some bespoke short-form videos built around individual stories averaging more than 30 seconds. 

Alongside branded-content deals, DMG earns revenue through platform monetization, including revenue-sharing arrangements with Meta, Aspel said. That creates a balancing act: posts can generate revenue and engagement on Facebook, while links can send readers to DMG’s own sites. “You get money from the posts you’re doing, but then you’re also trying to drive people to websites,” he said. The team uses a mix of video, static posts and links, aiming for the formats to complement rather than cannibalize one another.