Digital Publishers Prioritising Enterprise Fundamentals as ESG Efforts Wane, Reveals AOP Survey
Readership progress is the highest precedence for digital publishers, which many plan to realize via elevated content material output
London, UK: The Affiliation of On-line Publishers (AOP) has launched the ‘Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2025’ report, summarising findings from its annual survey of digital publishers and options suppliers. The report reveals a powerful emphasis on readership and income progress, gradual leisure round AI, and a de-prioritisation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets.
The survey, performed by AOP and sponsored by The Commerce Desk, was accomplished by 120 contributors throughout digital publishing and options suppliers, principally from senior positions, between December 2024 and January 2025. When options suppliers responded to a query, they gave solutions they believed mirrored their writer purchasers’ attitudes and priorities.
Strategic priorities
When publishers have been requested about which of their strategic priorities are most vital, “rising our readership” was primary, with 85% agreeing or strongly agreeing; adopted by “growing new income streams via product innovation” at 80%; and rising promoting revenues at 79%. Options suppliers’ responses returned the identical prime three.
Prime priorities from final yr’s survey that fell considerably have been “information privateness and compliance”, “recruiting and retaining expertise”, and “making certain a various and inclusive workforce” — suggesting the laborious day-to-day of enterprise is at the moment prime of thoughts.
Income progress
Drilling deeper into how publishers plan to develop their revenues, 66% agreed or strongly agreed that rising revenues from advertisers — corresponding to via sharing viewers insights — described their strategy. Complementing this strategy have been elevated content material output (52%) and altering the character of this output to draw extra readers/viewers (40%). In brief, publishers need to enhance the content-to-readership-to-revenue funnel.
The introduction of subscription and “freemium” fashions have been every chosen by round a 3rd (34% and 32%) of publishers as their strategy to income progress, although with half of respondents seeing subscriptions as having essentially the most progress potential, these comparatively low numbers are doubtless as a result of many have already launched such fashions. Branded content material and first-party information gross sales are additionally seen as having excessive progress potential, with each chosen by 45% of respondents.
Knowledge and identifiers
Taking a look at information and identifiers, first-party information scored 4.2 out of 5 as a industrial focus, whereas zero-party information scored 2.8, suggesting that the latter is a comparatively untapped useful resource. Momentum can also be shifting in direction of new id options, with 58% of respondents stating they’re both trailing or have applied new id options and are seeing advantages. 54% additionally strongly disagreed when requested if they’d return to utilizing cookies, suggesting a decisive shift away from the know-how amidst ongoing confusion round Google’s technique.
AI exploration and insurance policies
Attitudes in direction of AI has softened in each enthusiasm and worry, with across the similar proportion of publishers exploring generative AI efficiencies as final yr (from 76% to 77%), whereas the exploration of AI product improvements fell barely (70% to 63%), as did AI coaching and coverage growth (55% to 47%). A notable change is that final yr round 1 / 4 (26%) of respondents prohibited generative AI, whereas solely round a tenth (11%) do at the moment.
ESG and DE&I
Lastly, ESG priorities noticed a precipitous decline throughout the board. ESG’s significance to staff fell from 70% to 51%; significance to buyers from 51% to 44%; significance to enterprise values from 62% to 44%, and significance to advertisers from 58% to 39%. Specializing in range, fairness, and inclusion (DE&I) noticed extra optimistic responses, with 37% feeling they’ve an efficient DE&I technique versus 26% final yr, whereas the quantity that felt there was room for enchancment fell from 48% final yr to 36% at the moment.
“Readers are the wellspring from which all different revenues circulation, so it’s no shock to see publishers prioritise progress on this space,” mentioned Richard Reeves, Managing Director at AOP. “Going again to the fundamentals of constructing an viewers and successfully monetising this viewers is the important thing to survival in an period of infinite distraction. Nevertheless, strengthening publishing fundamentals should not come at the price of progress in direction of a fairer, extra sustainable, and equitable business, so I hope the waning ESG focus on this yr’s survey is a blip within the information and never a pattern.”
“This survey affords an unrivalled cross-section of the UK digital publishing business, and it was a pleasure to companion with AOP to collect this yr’s responses,” mentioned Theo Luke, Senior Director Stock Growth at The Commerce Desk. “The business has clearly discovered efficient options to handle the frustrations attributable to shifting third-party cookie insurance policies, with rising numbers of publishers adopting new id instruments and already seeing the advantages. By utilizing different identifiers, on-line shops are laying the foundations for larger revenues, improved accuracy for advertisers, and a greater, extra streamlined expertise for audiences.
The complete report may be downloaded right here.
In regards to the ‘Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2025’ survey
This analysis, carried out between December 2024 and January 2025, surveyed 120 stakeholders within the publishing business, 77.5% of whom have been from publishers and 22.5% from organisations offering options to the publishing sector. Its intention was to seize how digital publishing corporations within the UK are responding to present business challenges.
About Affiliation of On-line Publishers
Affiliation of On-line Publishers (AOP) is an business physique representing digital publishing corporations that create authentic, branded, high quality content material. AOP champions the pursuits of media homeowners from various backgrounds together with newspaper and journal publishing, TV and radio broadcasting, and pure on-line media. For extra info, please go to
