Media companies predicted digital revenue streams worldwide 2024

A report held at the end of 2023 looking at trends in journalism and media for the year ahead revealed that 80 percent of industry leaders believed that subscriptions would be the most important digital revenue stream for news companies in 2024. This marked an increase of four percent from the share who said the same at the end of 2020 when asked about trends in 2021. Subscriptions were cited as publishers' revenue stream in all four years shown, although display advertising and events are growing in importance. Attitudes on the importance of e-commerce and native advertising remained relatively unchanged year over year.

Most important digital revenue streams for publishers in the year ahead according to industry leaders worldwide from 2021 to 2024

Characteristic	2021	2022	2023	2024
Other (selling technology, content syndication, government support)	20%	5%	5%	-
Micropayment (incl. digital wallets)	6%	5%	6%	6%
Related businesses (e.g. property, jobs, betting)	14%	16%	15%	16%
Donations/suport from philanthropic funds/foundations	10%	15%	18%	15%
Donations or crowdfunding (one-off or recurring donations from consumers)	14%	17%	20%	15%
E-commerce	29%	30%	26%	29%
Funding from platforms (content licensing or innovation projects)	23%	29%	33%	20%
Events	40%	40%	38%	49%
Native advertising (sponsored content)	61%	59%	58%	61%
Display advertising/sponsorship	66%	73%	75%	72%
Subscription (ongoing regular payments for content, premium features, or both)	76%	79%	80%	80%

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Release date

January 2024

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2020 to 2023*

Number of respondents

2022: 273

Age group

18 years and older

Special properties

among those holding senior positions (editorial, commercial, or product) in traditional or digital-born publishing companies

Method of interview

Online survey

Supplementary notes

*Surveys held in December of each year, data refers to year ahead.
Participants came from organizations with a print background, digital-born media, B2B companies, or news agencies, or represented commercial or public service broadcasters.
Data for previous years come from earlier reports.
Missing data was not provided by the source.

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